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Apache Geode/GemFire

Note: This feature is available in version 2.3.0+

VMware Tanzu GemFire is VMware's distribution of Apache Geode. This connector was built for using GemFire in an application using the GemFire Native Client on Cloud Foundry. It has not been extensively tested under other deployment configurations, but will be best-effort supported for other situations as well.

WARNING: The GemFire Native Client currently only supports 64 bit applications running on Windows. See GemFire Native Client System Requirements for more.

Usage

To use this connector:

  1. Create a GemFire service instance and bind it to your application.
  2. Optionally, configure GemFire client settings.
  3. Add the Steeltoe Cloud Foundry config provider to you ConfigurationBuilder.
  4. Add GemFire classes to your DI container.

Get GemFire Driver

Follow the instructions in the GemFire Native Client documentation for instructions on downloading the driver and getting started with general driver usage.

TIP: Should you wish to avoid committing the driver to source, you are free to copy the script that Steeltoe's CI process uses in your own pipelines. You will need a legacy API token for the script to complete.

Add NuGet Reference

Add a reference to the appropriate Steeltoe Connector NuGet package

Configure Settings

The GemFire client is highly configurable, beyond the scope of this documentation. Steeltoe does not interact with geode.properties or cache.xml files, but any settings found under gemfire:client:properties in your application's configuration are applied to the CacheFactory. Steeltoe attempts to map the properties node in your configuration to a Dictionary<string, string> and then applies each entry to GemFire via the Set method on the CacheFactory.

For example, if you want to set the log-level and connection timeout, use the following in your application.json file:

{
  "gemfire": {
    "client": {
      "properties": {
        "log-level": "fine",
        "connect-timeout": "100ms"
      }
    }
  }
}

Refer to the GemFire documentation for a more complete list of settings to configure.

Cloud Foundry

To use GemFire Cloud Cache on Cloud Foundry:

  1. Create a service instance
  2. Bind the instance to your application via either a manifest file or the CLI (shown below)
  3. Create region (If the application is unable to do so automatically)
# Create CloudCache service instance
cf create-service p-cloudcache dev-plan myPCCService

# Bind service to `myApp`
cf bind-service myApp myPCCService

# Restage the app to pick up change
cf restage myApp

If your application fails to programmatically create regions, use the gfsh CLI to create it. You will need the gfsh url and the cluster operator credentials provided in the service binding:

"p-cloudcache": [{
    ...
      "urls": {
        "gfsh": "https://cloudcache-serviceguid.run.pcfone.io/gemfire/v1",
        ...
      },
      "users": [{
          "password": "********",
          "roles": [ "cluster_operator" ],
          "username": "********"
        ...

Use gfsh to connect to the cluster and create the region:

gfsh>connect --url=https://cloudcache-someguid.run.pcfone.io/gemfire/v1 --user=cluster_operator_****** --password=******

Successfully connected to: GemFire Manager HTTP service @ https://cloudcache-someguid.run.pcfone.io/gemfire/v1

Cluster-0 gfsh>create region --name=SteeltoeDemo --type=PARTITION
                     Member                      | Status
------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cacheserver-71461c75-ba87-4207-8d6d-c84be814a601 | Region "/SteeltoeDemo" created on "cacheserver-71461c75-ba87-4207-8d6d-c84be814a601"