About Distributed Configurations
The BigMemory Max configuration file (ehcache.xml by default) contains the configuration for one instance of a CacheManager (the Ehcache class managing a set of defined caches). This configuration file must be in your application's classpath to be found. When using a WAR file, ehcache.xml should be copied to WEB-INF/classes.
Note the following about ehcache.xml in a Terracotta cluster:
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The copy on disk is loaded into memory from the first Terracotta client (also called application server or node) to join the cluster.
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Once loaded, the configuration is persisted in memory by the Terracotta servers in the cluster and survives client restarts.
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In-memory configuration can be edited in the Terracotta Management Console (TMC). Changes take effect immediately but are
not written to the original on-disk copy of ehcache.xml.
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The in-memory cache configuration is removed with server restarts if the servers are not in persistent mode (
<restartable enabled="false">), which is the default. The original (on-disk) ehcache.xml is loaded.
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The in-memory cache configuration survives server restarts if the servers are in persistent mode (
<restartable enabled="true">). If you are using the Terracotta servers with persistence of shared data, and you want the cluster to load the original (on-disk) ehcache.xml, the servers' database must be wiped by removing the data files from the servers'
server-data directory. This directory is specified in the Terracotta configuration file in effect (tc-config.xml by default). Wiping the database causes
all persisted shared data to be lost.
A minimal distributed-cache configuration should have the following configured:
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A Clustering element in individual cache configurations. See
terracotta.