Protocol Adapter Clusters

Protocol Adapter clusters are groupings of physical protocol adapters (PAs) that function as a single one. For enterprise customers with large implementations, clusters offer greater resiliency and capacity by spreading the load across machines.

Having many devices connected to a single PA reduces the performance of the devices. Simply connecting a second, separate PA to the MQTT broker does not improve performance. In fact, such an installation causes decreased speed and undesirable behaviour. Arranging PA's into clusters prevents this and has the added advantage of providing load balancing and automatic failover. See Protocol Adapter (PA) Setup for more details.

To add a new protocol adapter, see step 8 in Installing a Protocol Adaptor (PA).

To view clusters, select Administration > System Management. "Cluster" appends to the names of all protocol adapters on the list. "Cluster" is also displayed in the Type column along with the number of protocol adapters in the cluster. Selecting the arrow beside the number displays details of each protocol adapter.

The type column indicates which kind of protocol adapter you are viewing, as indicated below:

See Protocol Adapter (PA) Status for more details on Protocol Adapter Status and Cluster Status.