ActiveMQ and randomize - activemq

Let's say I have the following ActiveMQ connection string:
failover:(tcp://broker1:61616,tcp://broker2:61616)?randomize=true
I am sending in like a few thousands requests to the brokers from a Java producer which has this configuration.
Sometimes I noticed that all messages end up going to just 1 broker with the other not receiving a single message.
Is this normal behavior?
Out of 10 tests, I made I may have noticed this behavior a couple of times. And at other times both the brokers received the message.
How randomize=true works?
The only explanation I found on http://activemq.apache.org/failover-transport-reference.html is: "use a random algorithm to choose the the URI to use for reconnect from the list provided"

The randomize flag on the failover transport indicates that the transport should choose at random one of the configured broker URIs to connect to (in your case there are two to choose from. Once a client is connect to one of those brokers the client will remain happily connected and send messages only to that broker until such time as something happens to interrupt the connection. Once the connection is interrupted the client will again attempt to connect to one of those two brokers. So in your case the single producer sending all its messages to one broker means, its working just like its expected too.

Related

RabbitMQ durable queue losing messages over STOMP

I have a webpage connecting to a rabbit mq broker using javascript/websockets that are exposed by a spring app deployed in tomcat. Messages are produced 1 per second by an external application and are rendered on the webpage. The javascript subscription is durable.
The issue I'm experiencing is that when the network connection is broken on the javascript client for a period of time (say 60 seconds), the first ~24 seconds of messages are missing. I've looked through the logs of the app deployed in tomcat and the missing messages seem to be up until the following log statement:
org.springframework.messaging.simp.stomp.StompBrokerRelayMessageHandler - DEBUG - TCP connection to broker closed in session 14
I think this is the point at which the endpoint realises the javascript client is disconnected and decides to close the connection to the broker resulting in future messages queueing up.
My question is how can I ensure that the messages between the time the network is severed and the time the endpoint realises the client is disconnected are not lost? Should the endpoint put the messages back on the queue somehow? Maybe there's a way to make it transactional?
Thanks in advance.
The RabbitMQ team monitors this mailing list and only sometimes answers questions on StackOverflow.
Your Tomcat application should not acknowledge messages from RabbitMQ until it confirms that your Javascript client has received them. This way, any messages that aren't ack-ed by the JS client won't be ack-ed by Tomcat, and RabbitMQ will re-deliver them.
I don't know how your JS app and Tomcat interact, but you may have to implement your own ack process there.

Simulating loss of broker publisher connectivity in ActiveMQ

I wish to run an experiment in which the publisher loses connection with the broker and then enqueues messages in its own queue and then when it regains connectivity it sends all its queued messages to the broker. How can I I do this since if I call close connection, I can no longer send(raises an exception). A trick that I can think of is to use a network of two brokers and simulate the above by breaking the connection between the two brokers. Is there an API call that I can use to do the above?
This is very much like facebook messenger or whatsapp acting as a publisher and enqueuing our to-send messages if we are offline and sending them once we are connected.
There is plenty of solutions you could use to break the connection in order to test, here is a non-comprehensive list :
Make a script that can set/unset a firewall rule on your environement blocking the connection port
If you are working with VMs, you can suspend/resume the one running Activemq, you can even automate it with tools like vagrant (vagrant suspend, then vagrant up)
Tweak the connection manualy accessing the activemq jmx
Develop an activemq plugin able to trash connections on demand (or maybe there is one ?)
Now in order to have the behavior you wish to obtain there is two options :
1) Make sure your connection is failover so it can be reestablished, and store your message on disk before sending them with your producer.
2)Produce to a local broker embbeded in your app, and connect this one to the remote broker.

Efficient local transport for ActiveMQ broker

I have multiple applications (the producers) that produce messages to be processed by another application (the consumer). The messages will be sent through an ActiveMQ broker running on the same server. I don't have access to the applications' code, therefore the messages will be produced by executing a script (I currently don't know which language to use). The consumers will be Java application that will process the received messages.
I'm looking for an efficient transport that fits my use case. The VM transport cannot be used here. Also, I would like to avoid opening a TCP connection with the broker every time the producer script is executed (i.e. I would like to avoid using the TCP transport). I thought that UDP may be a good fit unless you know another transport which is more appropriate.
Thanks,
Mickael
There are pros and cons of both the TCP and UDP protocol
1)If ordering of messages and reliable-delivery of messages doesn't matter to you then UDP might be a nice choice,moreover in UDP it can also happen that duplicate messages are delievered to broker.
2)Using TCP offers reliable-delivery of messages along with ordering, but if you want to eliminate the stream Transport delay of TCP then you might think against it.
There are couple of others as well which you can retrospect based on your requirements
NIO protocol(USed in case of high traffic requirements)
HTTP protocol(In case you want to bypass firewalls)
Hope this helps!
Good luck!

RabbitMQ: Server heartbeat must fail 3 times before connection drop?

We have a HA RabbitMQ cluster (v3.2.x) with two nodes that sits behind a load-balancer. Our clients are configured to use a 300s heartbeat. Everything works as expected most of the time.
However, if the client's connection drops (say the client's NIC is disconnected), we have noticed (via TCPDump/wireshark) that the RabbitMQ node will attempt 3 heartbeat messages (in our case nearly 15 mins) before it closes the connection. Why? Why not close it after one failure?
Is there some means to change this behavior on the RabbitMQ server? Or do we have to shorten our heartbeat to something much smaller like 5s or 10s in order to get the connection to close sooner, thoughts?
Related issue...
Looking at the TCPDump (captured on load-balancer), I wonder why the LB doesn't close the connection when it doesn't receive the TCP-ACK from the dead client in response to the proxied RabbitMQ server heartbeat request? In fact, the LB will attempt to send the request several times (never receiving a response, of course). Wouldn't it make sense for the LB to make the assumption the connection has been dropped and close the entire session (including the connection to RabbitMQ node)?
It appears as though RabbitMQ is configured to tolerate two missed heartbeats before it terminates the connection. However, it waits until the next heartbeat would need to be sent before it drops the connection, that's what gives it the appearance of requiring 3 missed heartbeats.
Heartbeat1 (no response) wait Heartbeat2 (no response) wait Heartbeat3 terminate
There is a slight bug in MQ (it sends a 3rd heartbeat but immediately terminates the connection) but it isn't really affecting anything.

Data broadcasting between instances of distributed server

I'm trying to get some feedback on the recommendations for a service 'roster' in my specific application. I have a server app that maintains persistant socket connections with clients. I want to further develop the server to support distributed instances. Server "A" would need to be able to broadcast data to the other online server instances. Same goes for all other active instances.
Options I am trying to research:
Redis / Zookeeper / Doozer - Each server instance would register itself to the configuration server, and all connected servers would receive configuration updates as it changes. What then?
Maintain end-to-end connections with each server instance and iterate over the list with each outgoing data?
Some custom UDP multicast, but I would need to roll my own added reliability on top of it.
Custom message broker - A service that runs and maintains a registry as each server connects and informs it. Maintains a connection with each server to accept data and re-broadcast it to the other servers.
Some reliable UDP multicast transport where each server instance just broadcasts directly and no roster is maintained.
Here are my concerns:
I would love to avoid relying on external apps, like zookeeper or doozer but I would use them obviously if its the best solution
With a custom message broker, I wouldnt want it to become a bottleneck is throughput. Which would mean I might have to also be able to run multiple message brokers and use a load balancer when scaling?
multicast doesnt require any external processes if I manage to roll my own, but otherwise I would need to maybe use ZMQ, which again puts me in the situation of depends.
I realize that I am also talking about message delivery, but it goes hand in hand with the solution I go with.
By the way, my server is written in Go. Any ideas on a best recommended way to maintain scalability?
* EDIT of goal *
What I am really asking is what is the best way to implement broadcasting data between instances of a distributed server given the following:
Each server instance maintains persistent TCP socket connections with its remote clients and passes messages between them.
Messages need to be able to be broadcasted to the other running instances so they can be delivered to relavant client connections.
Low latency is important because the messaging can be high speed.
Sequence and reliability is important.
* Updated Question Summary *
If you have multiple servers / multiple end points that need to pub/sub between each other, what is a recommended mode of communication between them? One or more message brokers to re-pub messages to a roster of the discovered servers? Reliable multicast directly from each server?
How do you connect multiple end points in a distributed system while keeping latency low, speed high, and delivery reliable?
Assuming all of your client-facing endpoints are on the same LAN (which they can be for the first reasonable step in scaling), reliable UDP multicast would allow you to send published messages directly from the publishing endpoint to any of the endpoints who have clients subscribed to the channel. This also satisfies the low-latency requirement much better than proxying data through a persistent storage layer.
Multicast groups
A central database (say, Redis) could track a map of multicast groups (IP:PORT) <--> channels.
When an endpoint receives a new client with a new channel to subscribe, it can ask the database for the channel's multicast address and join the multicast group.
Reliable UDP multicast
When an endpoint receives a published message for a channel, it sends the message to that channel's multicast socket.
Message packets will contain ordered identifiers per server per multicast group. If an endpoint receives a message without receiving the previous message from a server, it will send a "not acknowledged" message for any messages it missed back to the publishing server.
The publishing server tracks a list of recent messages, and resends NAK'd messages.
To handle the edge case of a server sending only one message and having it fail to reach a server, server can send a packet count to the multicast group over the lifetime of their NAK queue: "I've sent 24 messages", giving other servers a chance to NAK previous messages.
You might want to just implement PGM.
Persistent storage
If you do end up storing data long-term, storage services can join the multicast groups just like endpoints... but store the messages in a database instead of sending them to clients.