Chapter 1. Introduction

Welcome to the official Red Hat Data Grid User Guide. This comprehensive document will guide you through every last detail of Red Hat Data Grid.

1.1. What is Red Hat Data Grid ?

Red Hat Data Grid is a distributed in-memory key/value data store with optional schema. It can be used both as an embedded Java library and as a language-independent service accessed remotely over a variety of protocols (Hot Rod, REST, and Memcached). It offers advanced functionality such as transactions, events, querying and distributed processing as well as numerous integrations with frameworks such as the JCache API standard, CDI, Hibernate, WildFly, Spring Cache, Spring Session, Lucene, Spark and Hadoop.

1.2. Why use Red Hat Data Grid ?

1.2.1. As a local cache

The primary use for Red Hat Data Grid is to provide a fast in-memory cache of frequently accessed data. Suppose you have a slow data source (database, web service, text file, etc): you could load some or all of that data in memory so that it’s just a memory access away from your code. Using Red Hat Data Grid is better than using a simple ConcurrentHashMap, since it has additional useful features such as expiration and eviction.

1.2.2. As a clustered cache

If your data doesn’t fit in a single node, or you want to invalidate entries across multiple instances of your application, Red Hat Data Grid can scale horizontally to several hundred nodes.

1.2.3. As a clustering building block for your applications

If you need to make your application cluster-aware, integrate Red Hat Data Grid and get access to features like topology change notifications, cluster communication and clustered execution.

1.2.4. As a remote cache

If you want to be able to scale your caching layer independently from your application, or you need to make your data available to different applications, possibly even using different languages / platforms, use Red Hat Data Grid Server and its various clients.

1.2.5. As a data grid

Data you place in Red Hat Data Grid doesn’t have to be temporary: use Red Hat Data Grid as your primary store and use its powerful features such as transactions, notifications, queries, distributed execution, distributed streams, analytics to process data quickly.

1.2.6. As a geographical backup for your data

Red Hat Data Grid supports replication between clusters, allowing you to backup your data across geographically remote sites.