Brokerless routing

Although the Interconnect Router can be used to build large-scale, geographically distributed broker clusters, it also provides a mechanism to do inter-network RPC against a transparent backplane where producers and consumers are decoupled in location (just like with a broker, but without a broker). This gives some of the best of both the messaging and RPC worlds. Let's take a look.

In this lab we'll take a look at configuring the Interconnect Router to route messages to and from an AMQ7 broker. Clients can talk directly to the router and think they're talking to a broker.

Take a look in the labs/qdr/brokerless folder. We have three different Interconnect configuration files and a couple different scripts to control the demo. We'll be using docker to run this demo, so verify you have access to a docker host (either on your laptop with Docker for Mac/Windows, or using Minikube, or using Red Hat CDK 3.0).

Let's take a look at the salient parts of the configuration:

router3.conf:

listener {
  role: normal
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 5672
  linkCapacity: 1000
}

... 

listener {
  role: inter-router
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 10003
}

Here we see that we're opening a listener for port 5672 and for 10003. The 5672 port is for AMQP clients to connect directly to the router mesh. Port 10003 is for other routers to connect. Note the role each listener has (ie, normal and inter-router). We would expect the other routers to connect to this router via is listener on 10003. Also, this router doesn't have any connectors to any other routers.

router2.conf:

listener {
  role: inter-router
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 10002
}

...

connector {
    role: inter-router
    host: router3
    port: 10003
    saslMechanisms: ANONYMOUS
}

In this configuration file, we see that there are no AMQP listeners (nothing listening on 5672, and no listeners labeled normal). There is a single listener on port 10002. We do see a single connector pointing to the router3 10003 port. Let's look at the last router:

router1.conf:

listener {
  role: normal
  host: 0.0.0.0
  port: 5672
  linkCapacity: 1000
}


...

connector {
    role: inter-router
    host: router2
    port: 10002
    saslMechanisms: ANONYMOUS
}

connector {
    role: inter-router
    host: router3
    port: 10003
    saslMechanisms: ANONYMOUS
}

In this configuration, we see that this router also exposes an AMQP port on 5672. It also connects to the other routers, router 2 on port 10002 and router 3 on 10003

Now that we see how the routers are connected with each other, let's bootstrap the router mesh. Make sure you're in the labs/qdr/brokerless folder and type:

./start.sh

This will bootstrap each broker with their respective configuration files and link them together properly. The containers will be running in the background, so you can take a look at each ones logs to verify they're up correctly:

docker logs router1
4area\xa1\x010"
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 ROUTER_CORE (trace) Core action 'delete_delivery'
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 ROUTER_CORE (trace) Core action 'delete_delivery'
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 ROUTER_CORE (trace) Core action 'link_flow'
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 ROUTER_CORE (trace) Core action 'link_flow'
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 SERVER (trace) [2]:1 <- @flow(19) [next-incoming-id=2600, incoming-window=2147483647, next-outgoing-id=0, outgoing-window=2147483647, handle=0, delivery-count=2600, link-credit=250, drain=false]
Thu May 25 13:42:50 2017 SERVER (trace) [2]:0 <- @transfer(20) [handle=0, delivery-id=2604, delivery-tag=b"X\x14\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00", message-format=0, settled=true, more=false] (229) "\x00Sr\xd1\x00\x00\x00E\x00\x00\x00\x04\xa3\x0ex-opt-qd.trace\xd0\x00\x00\x00\x0f\x00\x00\x00\x01\xa1\x090/Router3\xa3\x10x-opt-qd.ingress\xa1\x090/Router3\x00Ss\xd0\x00\x00\x00\x1f\x00\x00\x00\x06@@\xa1\x14amqp:/_local/qdhello@@@\x00St\xd1\x00\x00\x00\x13\x00\x00\x00\x02\xa1\x06opcode\xa1\x05HELLO\x00Sw\xd1\x00\x00\x00N\x00\x00\x00\x08\xa1\x04seen\xd0\x00\x00\x00\x16\x00\x00\x00\x02\xa1\x07Router2\xa1\x07Router1\xa1\x08instance\x81\x00\x00\x00\x00Y&\xd5\xd9\xa1\x02id\xa1\x07Router3\xa1\x04area\xa1\x010"

To run the demo, make sure you start a receiver first:

./receiver_router3.sh

This will connect to router 3 on its AMQP port (5672) and begin listening for messages on address /myAddress.

Let's start the sender:

./sender_router1.sh

This will connect to the router 1 on its AMQP port and send messages to address /myAddress. You should see indications of a single message flowing through the mesh (via the sender/receiver logs).