Hazelcast - a simple distributed caching alternative

I have over the last couple years used EhCache either via Spring (with AOP) or having it configured as hibernates' cache. I have never had the time or the need to look into the whole distributed caching available with Terracotta. However I recently stumbled on to Hazelcast and read the following:

"Hazelcast is pure Java. JVMs that are running Hazelcast will dynamically cluster. Although by default Hazelcast will use multicast for discovery, it can also be configured to only use TCP/IP for environments where multicast is not available or preferred. Communication among cluster members is always TCP/IP with Java NIO beauty. Default configuration comes with 1 backup so if one node fails, no data will be lost. It is as simple as using java.util.{Queue, Set, List, Map}. Just add the hazelcast.jar into your classpath and start coding."

I was instantly intrigued. So it sounds simple enough...Open IDE...jump in... being a maven fan, I figure, why download and manually "install" when you can just use maven, so I search around a little and add the following to a pom.

Edit: 1.8.4 is now outdated check http://www.hazelcast.com/downloads.jsp for the latest.

From the online documentation, I saw there was an InstanceListener interface. I create a simple Main class, that implements that and lists the instances.



So running this just adds a listener to the Hazelcast instance. According to the documentation Hazelcast allows for the following (and lots more):
# Distributed java.util.{Queue, Set, List, Map}
# Querying distributed data

I created a couple Main classes to run these separately, so that I could see if they are usable across different JVM executions.








So within minutes... I have a distributed cache across 4 applications, that I can monitor, control, query... (and btw. Hazelcast allows you to add indexes to the caches, same as a database to optimize queries).
If I was to place these 4 applications on 4 different machines, they will by default cluster (multicast for discovery) and have built in failover, monitoring and even persistence if required.

Coming from an environment where we have dozens of servers all caching data, this has got to be one of the most exciting open source products I have come across. Now I just need to convince the powers that be to prototype this and this may be the first open source project I actually try get involved in. The possibilities I am seeing for this type of functionality and then integrating it with the Spring Framework may actually make my brain explode.