Topology and Communication General Concepts

Before you configure your Pivotal GemFire members, make sure you understand the options for topology and communication.

• Topology Types

  The Pivotal GemFire topology options allow you to scale horizontally and vertically.

• Planning Topology and Communication

  Create a topology plan and a detailed list of machines and communication ports that your members will use. Configure your Pivotal GemFire systems and the communication between systems.

• How Member Discovery Works

  Pivotal GemFire provides various options for member discovery within a distributed system and between clients and servers.

• How Communication Works

  GemFire uses a combination of TCP and UDP unicast and multicast for communication between members. You can change the default behavior to optimize communication for your system.

• Using Bind Addresses

  You use a bind address configuration to send network traffic through non-default network cards and to distribute the load of network traffic for GemFire across multiple cards. If no bind address setting is found, GemFire uses the host machine’s default address.

• Choosing Between IPv4 and IPv6

  By default, Pivotal GemFire uses Internet Protocol version 4 for GemFire address specifications. You can switch to Internet Protocol version 6 if all your machines support it. You may lose performance, so you need to understand the costs of making the switch.