Session objects are maintained for stateful clusters.

Clustered Integration Servers create and maintain the session objects that are stored in the distributed Terracotta Server Array cache.

In a non-clustered environment, Integration Server maintains session information in its own local memory. In a cluster, however, Integration Server creates a session in the distributed (or shared) cache, so that when a load balancer redirects a client for failover, the new server can access the session information.

The Integration Server that initially receives a request from a client creates the session object in the cache. Other Integration Servers in the cluster can access the session object to access and update session information as necessary.

When you configure an Integration Server to use clustering, you specify a setting that indicates how long inactive session objects are maintained in the cache. Periodically, each Integration Server in the cluster checks the session objects in the cache to determine if any have expired, and if so, removes them.