topic Re: Load balancing jobs in Alfresco Archive

Load balancing jobs

kiyer — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:18:52 GMT

Hi,I am relative newbie to Activiti and have enjoyed exploring it so far. Apologize if this question has been asked before, but here goes. My company has tasked me with investigating integration with Activiti Workflow to replace our hand rolled business logic in code. I am modeling the subscription

Re: Load balancing jobs

jbarrez — Wed, 29 May 2013 09:46:06 GMT

One easy solution could be to have a dedicated machine for jobs.
Simply put up a server with an Activiti engine, but don't make it do 'regular' operation. Simply point it to the right database, and enable the job executor, and disable the job executor on the regular machines. You now have a dedicated way of handling jobs.

The requirement you state (send some job to a specific machine) is not possible out of the box. However, the job executor is pluggable and you can always write some custom code to solve your use case too (but first check if the 'quick-win' is not enough for you).

Re: Load balancing jobs

kiyer — Wed, 29 May 2013 17:36:23 GMT

Hi Joram,
Thank you for the guidance.

Quick win scenario: Is it possible to enable the job executor on more than machine dedicated to this task? This is so that they can share the load of the jobs. If yes, then how do they coordinate amongst themselves so that they dont execute the same job at the same time?
Full win scenario: You mentioned job executor is pluggable. If there are any tutorials/unit tests/ Activiti API that you can point me to, I would be greatful.

Thanks for your tips,
kiyer

Re: Load balancing jobs

jbarrez — Fri, 31 May 2013 10:25:43 GMT

1. Sure thing. Just fire up two or more and they'll balance the jobs between themselves. Nothing extra is required. Do note you'll see an 'ActivitiOptimisticException' passing by in this setup. But that's to be expected: one of the job executors will try to get the job, but fails and gets an optimistic locking exception.

2. No, nothing written out there. But the jobexecutor is a simple bean that you can plugin into the ProcessEngineConfigurationImpl easily. Check the DefaultJobExecutor class to get an idea how this should work.

Re: Load balancing jobs

kiyer — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:05:50 GMT

Joram,
Appreciate your tips!

Thanks!
kiyer