The existing SmartPlant Foundation Server architecture allows the SmartPlant Foundation server application pool to leverage multiple worker processes for concurrent tasks and significantly improve the scalability of SmartPlant Foundation.
Two services, Cache Service and Configuration Service, have been developed to support the SmartPlant Foundation server.
-
The Cache Service moves the SmartPlant Foundation In Process application cache to an Out of Process application cache. By moving the caching mechanism outside of the SmartPlant Foundation server, the system can better use the multiple worker processes feature available on the application pool. The server communicates with the cache service to get any information about the current configuration, such as schema and administration data.
-
The Configuration Service provides a centrally located place for all of the installation and configuration settings for SmartPlant Foundation. To take the burden of polling away from the application server, the configuration service now has prime responsibility for polling to check if the configured schedulers need to start processing. The poller determines which SmartPlant Foundation site needs to service the scheduler request and sends a request to that site to start polling for tasks.
-
The maximum number of worker processes that can be configured for the cache and configuration services application pools is limited to 1. Multiple worker processes are not supported for these application pools.
-
Due to the introduction of this cache service, the previous cache synchronization mechanism, using a distributed cache, is not supported.
-
To achieve the architecture changes, some fundamental changes have been made to some well-known and frequently used APIs; some of these have been removed. For more information and a full list of the class and API changes, see the SmartPlant Foundation Concurrency Changes document, which is delivered with the developer's toolkit. This document is only intended for users who have done SmartPlant Foundation server side development or customization.
-