Julien Ponge is at it again with a set of New Installers for both GlassFish v2.1 and v3 prelude. These are single-file installers with OS-specific features such as the new privileges elevation on Windows Vista & 7. They are based on a preview of IzPack 4.2.1 which is set to be released any day now in a final version. GlassFish Update Center bootstrapping is also a nice touch for these new installers. Check out the source code if you're interested in how Julien did all this. While we're on the topic of Julien, you may be interested in his recent interview about teaching Java EE with GlassFish.

Clustering - supported in GlassFish since Sept 2007 - will be further improved in the GFv2.1 release (companion to SailFin). One of the improvements is Apache 2.2 support and Kshitiz has written an good writeup on the configuration steps and mentions the automated support also. Clustering is used for horizontal scalability and high availability; interest and use of the feature is increasing quickly with GlassFish deployments. Check the official documentation and our recent White Paper on HA. Also, Satyajit just put together a set of slides on the topic (writeup, PDF@SLX, SlideShare).

We will cover Clustering in a future TA Online event; the Seam Online Event on Thursday went very well and I think the new format with multiple, shorter, presentations around a single topic is well suited to this new medium.