Message Service Architecture

A Message Queue message service can be implemented as a single broker or as a cluster consisting of multiple interconnected broker instances.

As the number of clients connected to a broker increases, and as the number of messages being delivered increases, a broker will eventually exceed resource limitations such as file descriptor, thread, and memory limits. One way to accommodate increasing loads is to add more broker instances to a Message Queue message service, distributing client connections and message routing and delivery across multiple brokers.

In general, this scaling works best if clients are evenly distributed across the cluster, especially message producing clients. Because of the overhead involved in delivering messages between the brokers in a cluster, clusters with limited numbers of connections or limited message delivery rates, might exhibit lower performance than a single broker.

You might also use a broker cluster to optimize network bandwidth. For example, you might want to use slower, long distance network links between a set of remote brokers within a cluster, while using higher speed links for connecting clients to their respective broker instances.

For more information on clusters, see Chapter 10, Configuring and Managing Broker Clusters