Next: Base Infrastructure Up: Reference implementations Previous: Jtrix Contents
Nodality is an implementation of a Jtrix node. It is available under an open source licence and offers the following features:
Currently, Nodality runs under Linux and on Windows. Under Linux, the basic networking support provides ARP spoofing to allow highly available clusters.
Supports resource accounting so that users can be charged for runtime resources such as CPU and memory.
Can be extended by executing special administrative netlets. Nodality delegates many functions to these netlets. These administrative netlets implement the hosting contracts, charging models, network protocols, and specialised facets of the netlet/node services.
Nodality can be embedded in other applications, allowing them to access Jtrix resources.
Nodality could be embedded in a Web server, for instance, allowing portal style Web sites to import Jtrix services to enhance existing functionality. Or it could be embedded in a command line or GUI application. Nodality provides an API to the embedding application which allows that application to behave as a netlet.
The external application can provide specialised functionality or administrative resources to the node if desired.
Nodality is also packaged as a standalone server application for use in backend nodes. The management framework allows many nodes to be administered together.
Nodality has also been packaged into a GUI which allows multiple nodes to be run in the same application. It displays the status of the netlets running in each node, shows service connections, and allows access to the debugging traces. Useful for demos and testing, as well as being an example of how Nodality may be embedded into another application.
Disk resource support is optional. Networking is supported. These services are offered to clients through the management framework, and need not be uniformly available through the cluster.
Jim Chapman 2001-08-16