Ehcache replicated cache RMI bootstrap

Question

My question is about cache replication by RMI using ehcache. Let's imagine I have 3 servers, that replicate cache with each other. At startup I want to load a cache from other running instances (bootstrap). My concerns are about these topics:

1. I have in-memory caching on all nodes. I restart one node1 and at startup (which I to bootstrap synchronously - bootstrapAsynchronously=false) I am loading cache from node2. What happens if suddenly, before cache is fully replicated node2 is down? Will replication continue from node3 (which also have it loaded)?
2. If I setup bootstrapping in async mode - will it throw some event about the fact that replication has finished and instance fully loaded cache?

Answer 1

Answer for the first part is that the cache will not start.

See http://ehcache.org/documentation/user-guide/rmi-replicated-caching#configuring-bootstrap-from-a-cache-peer :

When a peer comes up, it will be incoherent with other caches. When the bootstrap completes it will be partially coherent. Bootstrap gets the list of keys from a random peer, and then loads those in batches from random peers. If bootstrap fails then the Cache will not start. However if a cache replication operation occurs which is then overwritten by bootstrap there is a chance that the cache could be inconsistent.