I’d like to find out some definitive information from jadestorm or dombiak_gaston as to the availability of Clustering support in Openfire.
Would someone, preferably one of the aforementioned users or an engineer on the Openfire project, answer the following:
A. Will we ever see the code behind clustering.jar?
B. Is clustering.jar intended to be usable by new deployments of Openfire, ie. deployments that do not already have (legacy) Enterprise licenses?
C. If B is true, then how might one move forward with enabling that functionality. Please be as detailed as possible here.
D. Is Pete communicating incorrect information (see below for explanation)?
E. If D is true, who will be responsible for rectifying that situation?
I’ve gotten some conflicting information and I’d just like to have it clarified for myself and other members of the community, as I suspect that others are just as frustrated as I am.
I just spoke with Pete Davis, Client Relationship Manager with Jive, about availability of Clustering. Particularly, I was interested in an evaluation license specifically for the purpose of demonstrating Openfire’s clustering functionality at a meeting today. A meeting determining whether to move forward with purchasing and deploying Openfire clustering in the University of Pennsylvania’s Openfire instance. I told Pete that the Openfire Administrative console provides an input field for an Enterprise license which enables clustering and that I’d like to have another evaluation license for use at my meeting today (we were previously using a license that expired on May 21st; my colleagues and I were unable to meet before that expiration date). I was told by Pete to contact Oracle in regards to licensing for the clustering plugin.
Now I understand Pete’s logic here: Openfire Enterprise Clustering makes use of Oracle Coherence Enterprise Edition 3.3.1, which Jive licensed for use and distribution, therefore a prospective user of said Clustering functionality should contact Oracle.
However, as I told Pete, it’s likely that Oracle will have no idea how to address this issue once contacted. Jive is the licensee of note for the use of Coherence as it pertains to Openfire. I might explain to Oracle that Jive is no longer/may no longer be selling it’s Clustering functionality, and that I’d like to purchase a Coherence license directly from them, however, I have no access to the source for clustering.jar, and cannot determine how to enable the Jive portion of the Clustering plugin if I was to acquire a license from Oracle.
I had difficulty explaining the existence of the Jive portion of the Clustering plugin to Pete. I told Pete that though Clustering is supported by Coherence, Jive still had to develop some code that actually consumes the services offered by Coherence and makes pertinent data structures available to Coherence. Pete insisted that I speak with Oracle about licensing.
I apologize if this messages seems short and snippy, but I’m slightly frustrated with this issue. It seems to me that Clustering was the most important part of the Enterprise offering and is now the part that is most thin on detail. I hope to hear from someone soon.
Thanks,
Darian