Connecting Brokers

There are two general methods of connecting brokers into a cluster: from the command line (using the -cluster option) or by setting the imq.cluster.brokerlist property in the cluster configuration file. Whichever method you use, each broker that you start attempts to connect to the other brokers every five seconds; the connection will succeed once the master broker is started up (if one is configured). If a broker in the cluster starts before the master broker, it will remain in a suspended state, rejecting client connections, until the master broker starts; the suspended broker then will automatically become fully functional.

To configure a broker cluster from the command line, use the -cluster option to the imqbrokerd command to specify the complete list of brokers in the cluster when you start each one. For example, the following command starts a new broker and connects it to the brokers running at the default port (7676) on host1, at port 5000 on host2, and at port 9876 on the default host (localhost):

imqbrokerd -cluster host1,host2:5000,:9876

An alternative method, better suited for production systems, is to create a cluster configuration file that uses the imq.cluster.brokerlist property to specify the list of brokers to be connected. Each broker in the cluster must then set its own imq.cluster.url property to point to this cluster configuration file.

Whichever method you use, you must make sure that no broker in the cluster is given an address that resolves to the network loopback IP address (127.0.0.1). Any broker configured with this address will be unable to connect to other brokers in the cluster.

Some Linux installers automatically set the localhost entry to the network loopback address. On such systems, you must modify the system IP address so that all brokers in the cluster can be addressed properly.

For all Linux systems that participate in a cluster, check the /etc/hosts file as part of cluster setup. If the system uses a static IP address, edit the /etc/hosts file to specify the correct address for localhost. If the address is registered with Domain Name Service (DNS), edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf to change the order of the entries so that DNS lookup is performed before consulting the local hosts file. The line in /etc/nsswitch.conf should read as follows:

hosts: dns files

If you want secure, encrypted message delivery between brokers in a cluster, configure the cluster connection service to use an SSL-based transport protocol. For each broker in the cluster, set up SSL-based connection services, as described in Message Encryption. Then set each broker’s imq.cluster.transport property to ssl, either in the cluster configuration file or individually for each broker.