How to Configure TIBCO Enterprise Message Service 10.2 with FTL on a Kubernetes Container Platform

With the introduction of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS) 10, TIBCO FTL can be used as the backing stores for EMS.
FTL stores have a somewhat unique configuration and deployment model in comparison to other EMS storage types. When using FTL stores, the EMS server runs as a service within an FTL server – which is an umbrella process that launches and manages a number of messaging services that constitute a TIBCO FTL deployment. The integration of EMS with FTL in this manner reduces latency in communication between the EMS server and its FTL backend. Additionally, it also allows EMS to make use of FTL’s disaster recovery capabilities.

In terms of functionality, FTL stores are similar to file-based stores. When using FTL stores, all pending persistent message data and state information is maintained in the FTL server cluster.

TIBCO FTL offers the ability to provide disaster recovery which ensures realm availability and protects persist data. With EMS 10.2, the disaster recovery mechanism is now part of the EMS functionality, and can be triggered via tibemsadmin/tibftladmin.

Note: Though the deployment of EMS is in FTL, no previous knowledge of FTL is required. See the TIBCO Enterprise Message Service v10.2 documentation for additional details.

This document will provide the steps necessary to build and test an EMS environment utilizing FTL as the backing store for both TCP and TLS configurations.

Configuring and running the TIBCO EMS utilizing FTL involves:

1) Creating a Docker® image embedding FTL and EMS, and hosting it in a Docker registry

2) Provisioning Persisted volume storage for cloud platforms
3) Configuring and creating FTL/EMS containers based on the EMS Docker image to run in Kubernetes through pre-configured yaml configuration files.