Book Image

Blockchain with Hyperledger Fabric - Second Edition

By : Nitin Gaur, Anthony O'Dowd, Petr Novotny, Luc Desrosiers, Venkatraman Ramakrishna, Salman A. Baset
Book Image

Blockchain with Hyperledger Fabric - Second Edition

By: Nitin Gaur, Anthony O'Dowd, Petr Novotny, Luc Desrosiers, Venkatraman Ramakrishna, Salman A. Baset

Overview of this book

Blockchain with Hyperledger Fabric - Second Edition is a refreshed and extended version of the successful book on practical Hyperledger Fabric blockchain development. This edition includes many new chapters, alongside comprehensive updates and additions to the existing ones. Entirely reworked for Hyperledger Fabric version 2, this edition will bring you right up to date with the latest in blockchain. Using a real-world Trade Finance and Logistics example, with working code available on GitHub, you’ll really understand both how and why Hyperledger Fabric can be used to maximum effect. This book is your comprehensive guide and reference to explore and build blockchain networks using Hyperledger Fabric version 2. This edition of the book begins by outlining the evolution of blockchain, including an overview of relevant blockchain technologies. Starting from first principles, you’ll learn how to design and operate a permissioned blockchain network based on Hyperledger Fabric version 2. You will learn how to configure the main architectural components of a permissioned blockchain network including Peers, Orderers, Certificate Authorities, Channels, and Policies. You’ll then learn how to design, develop, package, and deploy smart contracts, and how they are subsequently used by applications. This edition also contains chapters on DevOps, blockchain governance, and security, making this your go-to book for Hyperledger Fabric version 2.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
16
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17
Index

Using a production-grade ordering service

The network we have built and run contracts and service applications on uses an ordering service that runs in solo mode, as we saw in Chapter 4, Setting the Stage with a Business Scenario. This is a trivial ordering service consisting of a single node that is completely in charge of ordering transactions into blocks. Needless to say, centralizing block creation violates core blockchain principles and therefore cannot be the basis for any production-grade enterprise network that requires a multi-node consensus-based ordering service. And Hyperledger Fabric 2 does support and recommend ordering services built on Raft clusters. (Fabric 1 supported Kafka- and ZooKeeper-based ordering services, though support for Raft was added in 1.4.)

So why did we run our network construction and development exercise on a solo orderer that will never be used in production? There are two reasons. One, we wanted to demonstrate to our readers that all aspects...