PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors

In many cases, external data is not always available in a form that is compatible for an event-driven architecture. Things like databases, filesystems, and SaaS applications need to be event-enabled to integrate with your event-driven architecture and connect to PubSub+ event brokers. For example:

  • A filesystem isn’t event-enabled by default, but it might be useful to have an event each time a file is created in a directory.

  • Database operations are not event-enabled by default, but it might be useful to have an event whenever there’s a Create, Update, or Delete (CRUD) operation performed to a table.

PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors provide data integration of third-party services (message brokers, databases, filesystems, cloud services & applications, and so on) with PubSub+ event brokers. They ingest (on-ramp) and egress (off-ramp) data to and from your PubSub+ event brokers to integrate things that are normally not event-enabled to support your event-driven architecture.

PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors are considered “self-contained” because each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector is fully standalone and can be deployed independently of other connectors or infrastructure. Each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector is considered part of a “family“ of SolacePubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors that are built on a common framework and Spring. You don't need in-depth knowledge of Spring or Java to use PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors.

The Common Framework for PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors

PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors share these common features and capabilities:

A common deployment model

Each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector is available as:

  • an executable package for deployment on compute resources such as bare metal, VMs, and cloud compute services.

  • a pre-built container image suitable for deployment on container runtimes such as Docker, Podman, or orchestration through Kubernetes as examples.

Common Runtime Models

Each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector runs:

  • as a single, standalone connector.

  • in a failover configuration that provides for an Active instance and 1-n “hot” Standby instances for high-availability.

  • as 2-n instances in Active-Active mode, providing horizontal scaling of PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors. In this deployment model, the source data services must be capable to handle multiple consumers, as in non-exclusive or partitioned queues on the PubSub+ event broker.

A common Configuration Model

Each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector:

  • uses Spring Framework technologies and Spring configuration concepts, such as config file formats, names, Spring profiles, property names, and so on.

  • comes with a complete, well-documented sample configuration to allow users to configure the PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors without prior knowledge of Java or Spring.

Common HTTP/JMX Endpoints

To access runtime information for PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors:

  • use the Spring Actuator project to expose endpoints (which are exposed or hidden is part of the operator's configuration), providing information on the instance such as:

    • Health check

    • Metrics

    • Configuration/environment information (including JVM)

    • Log access

  • provide a common logging framework support:

    • Each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector is built using the popular Logback logging framework.

    • Logback provides advanced logging features such as auto rollover by size or date, archiving, log export to common logging services, and log levels.

  • support common, configured metrics export to common monitoring tools:

    PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors are integrated with the Micrometer Application Observability project to provide a common, easily configured metrics export to many popular monitoring tools or services such as:

    • AppOptics
    • Azure Monitor
    • Netflix Atlas
    • CloudWatch
    • Datadog
    • Dynatrace
    • Elastic
    • Ganglia
    • Graphite
    • Humio
    • Influx/Telegraf
    • JMX
    • KairosDB
    • New Relic
    • OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP)
    • Prometheus
    • SignalFx
    • Google Stackdriver
    • StatsD
    • Wavefront

Running and Managing PubSub+ Self-Contained Connectors

Solace provides a number of self-contained connectors. The links below provide details on setup, workflow management, health, monitoring, configuration, and security for each PubSub+ Self-Contained Connector: