XESModule for Docker Overview

The rapidly developing application "containerization" changes the way IT operations are carried out: containers have taken the spotlight alongside virtual machines.

Edifecs adopts containers

Staying with the technology trends, Edifecs has adopted the containerized approach to bring your infrastructure to a new level. We offer XESModule for Docker that helps eliminate the need to configure each individual XEServer environment. Edifecs bundles all the XEServer line products and their dependencies as container images that drastically facilitates the deployment and scaling of XEServer-based solutions. As a result, you get an easy-to-deploy, reliable, and highly scalable system for processing your EDI tasks. To get XESModule for Docker images, contact Edifecs support.

How it works

XESModule for Docker is a set of container images distributed from a Google Cloud Repository. Each image represents a separate Edifecs product (component) that acts as an addon. With container orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes/Openshift, the addons can be bundled together in one container.

Kubernetes/Openshift orchestration

Kubernetes and OpenShift are container management systems that facilitate both configuration and automation. Since XESModule for Docker is a set of container images intended to interact with each other, the management of the containers is the most effective with an orchestration tool, such as Kubernetes. Kubernetes manages the lifecycle of several containers in a smart way: it provides communication between the containers, manages the load balancing, handles the recovery of dead containers, provides scheduling, monitoring, and so on.

Integration with Smart Trading repository

You can keep your XEServer profiles in the centralized Smart Trading Cloud repository so that any container can pull and run the most recent profile configuration. Alternatively, you can still attach profiles as zipped images to a container during the startup or even have it deployed as a separate addon container image.

Solution benefits

Running XEServer in containers offers you the following benefits:

  • A fast and easy way to spin up a new isolated XEServer environment for a given business process to boost performance during peak load.
  • Focus on building the business orchestrations (profiles), not on the software configuration and deployment.
  • The ability to store your orchestrations in the Smart Trading Cloud for continuous integration and deployment. This includes a Blue-Green deployment (a technique that reduces downtime and risk by running two identical production environments) with zero downtime when new updates get into your business process.
  • The ability to use your hardware infrastructure as a resource pool of compute nodes for your orchestration system, rather than individually managed servers to reduce administrative and maintenance costs.
  • The ability to leverage built-in automatic recovery on failover to ensure guaranteed uptime for your business processes. Orchestration systems like Kubernetes/Openshift provide out-of-the-box recovery mechanisms.
  • The ability to run other business applications alongside XEServer on a shared hardware pool.

There are some limitations with XESModule for Docker compared to the full on-premise version of XEServer: for example, operational monitoring is limited. However, you can use XESManager to monitor your XEServer-based solutions.