How to disable Stateful Session EJB (SFSB) clustering while leaving Stateless EJB (SLSB) clustering enabled in JBoss EAP 7

Environment

Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7

Issue

• How to disable Stateful Session EJB (SFSB) clustering while leaving Stateless EJB (SLSB) clustering enabled in JBoss EAP 7

Resolution

Change the stateful cache-ref from distributable to simple.

The JBoss CLI command would be:

/subsystem=ejb3:write-attribute(name=default-sfsb-cache,value=simple)

Which changes from:

        <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ejb3:5.0">
            ...
                <stateful default-access-timeout="5000" cache-ref="distributable" passivation-disabled-cache-ref="simple"/>
            ...
            </session-bean>

to:

        <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ejb3:5.0">
            ...
                <stateful default-access-timeout="5000" cache-ref="simple" passivation-disabled-cache-ref="simple"/>
            ...
            </session-bean>

Note: With the above change, all instances are on memory without passivation. SFSB instances should be expired by @javax.ejb.StatefulTimeout or removing an instance by calling remove API annotated @javax.ejb.Remove when finishing the SFSB invocation.

Root Cause

In OCP 4, the default configuration brings stateful bean as simple (not clustered):

$ cat  cat /opt/eap/standalone/configuration/standalone-openshift.xml
...
            <session-bean>
                <stateless>
                    <bean-instance-pool-ref pool-name="slsb-strict-max-pool"/>
                </stateless>
                <stateful default-access-timeout="5000" cache-ref="simple" passivation-disabled-cache-ref="simple"/>
                <singleton default-access-timeout="5000"/>
            </session-bean>

Diagnostic Steps

Note Do not change the infinispan cache-container ejb as this is used by SLSB's for clustering. This cache-container needs to remain a distributed-cache for SLSB's to remain clustered. If this is changed to local-cache then SLSB's would no longer function clustered.

            <cache-container name="ejb" aliases="sfsb" default-cache="dist" module="org.wildfly.clustering.ejb.infinispan">
                <transport lock-timeout="60000"/>
                <distributed-cache name="dist">
                    <locking isolation="REPEATABLE_READ"/>
                    <transaction mode="BATCH"/>
                    <file-store/>
                </distributed-cache>
            </cache-container>

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