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IceGrid and Glacier2 Integration

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IceGrid is a server activation and location service. This section describes the ways in which you can integrate Glacier2 and IceGrid.

It is not uncommon for a Glacier2 client to require access to a locator service such as IceGrid. In the absence of Glacier2, a locator client would typically define the property Ice.Default.Locator with a stringified proxy for the locator service. However, when that locator service is accessed via a Glacier2 router, the configuration requirements are slightly different. It is no longer necessary for the client's configuration to include Ice.Default.Locator; this property must be defined in the router's configuration instead.

For example, consider the following network architecture:

Glacier2 router configuration for IceGrid The client at 10.0.0.1 uses a bidirectional connection to Glacier2 client endpoints at 1.2.3.4. Glacier2 server endpoints use 10.0.0.1. Glacier2 and the IceGrid registry at 10.0.0.2 port 4061 use separate request and callback connections. A legend distinguishes requests, callbacks, and bidirectional connections. Client network Server network Client IP: 10.0.0.1 Glacier2 Client endpoints Server endpoints IP: 1.2.3.4 IP: 10.0.0.1 IceGrid registry IP: 10.0.0.2 Port: 4061 Request Callback Bidirectional connection

In this case the Glacier2 router's configuration must include the property shown below:

Properties
Ice.Default.Locator=IceGrid/Locator:tcp -h 10.0.0.2 -p 4061

An IceGrid application might want to use replication to increase the availability of Glacier2 session managers. When you configure an indirect proxy for a session manager (and configure Glacier2 with a locator proxy), the Ice runtime in the router queries the locator to obtain a proxy for a session manager replica.

By default, this proxy is cached for 10 minutes, meaning the router uses the same session manager proxy to create sessions for a 10-minute period, after which it queries the locator again. If you want to distribute the session-creation load among the session manager replicas more evenly, you can decrease the locator cache timeout using configuration properties.

For example, the following settings use a timeout of 30 seconds:

Properties
Glacier2.SessionManager.LocatorCacheTimeout=30
Glacier2.SSLSessionManager.LocatorCacheTimeout=30

As you can see, timeouts are specified individually for the SessionManager and SSLSessionManager proxies. You can also disable caching completely by using a value of 0, in which case the router queries the locator before every invocation on a session manager. See the discussion of session management for more details.