Clustering the Message Broker Profile

The following sections give you information and instructions on how to cluster the message broker profile of WSO2 EI with a third-party load balancer.

The clustering deployment pattern

This pattern has two WSO2 EI nodes to serve service requests with high availablity and scalability. The following image depicts the sample pattern this clustering deployment scenario will follow.

This pattern uses two nodes as well-known members. It is always recommended to have all nodes of the cluster as well-known members.

brokering profile cluster

When configuring your WSO2 products for clustering to host them in your production environment, it is necessary to use a specific IP address and not localhost or host names in your configurations.

Creating the databases

All profiles of WSO2 EI uses a database to store information such as user management details and registry data. All nodes in the cluster must use one central database for config and governance registry mounts. You can create the following databases and associated datasources.

The embedded H2 database is suitable for development. However, for most enterprise testing and production environments, it is recommended to use an industry-standard RDBMS such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL, etc.

Database Name	Description
WSO2_USER_DB	JDBC user store and authorization manager
`REGISTRY_DB`	Shared database for config and governance registry mounts in the product's nodes
`REGISTRY_LOCAL1`	Local registry space in the manager node
`REGISTRY_LOCAL2`	Local registry space in the worker node

In addition to the databases listed above, the Message Broker profile of WSO2 EI requires the following broker-specific data:

Database Name	Description
MB_DB	Stores instance data that are specific to the message broker profile.

Follow the steps given below to create the databases required for the Message Broker profile of WSO2 EI.

Download and install the MySQL Server.
Download the MySQL JDBC driver.
Download and unzip the WSO2 EI binary distribution.

Throughout this guide, <EI_HOME> refers to the extracted directory of the WSO2 EI product distribution.
Unzip the downloaded MySQL driver, and copy the MySQL JDBC driver JAR (mysql-connector-java-x.x.xx-bin.jar) to the <EI_HOME>/lib/ directory of both the WSO2 EI nodes.
Add the following line to the /etc/hosts file to define the hostname for configuring permissions for the new database: <MYSQL-DB-SERVER-IP> carbondb.mysql-wso2.com

Do this step only if your database is not on your local machine and on a separate server.
Execute the following command in a terminal/command window, where username is the username you want to use to access the databases: mysql -u username -p
Specify the password to access the databases with the username you specified when prompted.
Create the databases using the following commands:
```
mysql> create database WSO2_USER_DB;
mysql> use WSO2_USER_DB;
mysql> source <EI_HOME>/dbscripts/mysql.sql;
mysql> grant all on WSO2_USER_DB.* TO regadmin@"carbondb.mysql-wso2.com" identified by "regadmin";

mysql> create database REGISTRY_DB;
mysql> use REGISTRY_DB;
mysql> source <EI_HOME>/dbscripts/mysql.sql;
mysql> grant all on REGISTRY_DB.* TO regadmin@"carbondb.mysql-wso2.com" identified by "regadmin";

mysql> create database REGISTRY_LOCAL1;
mysql> use REGISTRY_LOCAL1;
mysql> source <EI_HOME>/dbscripts/mysql.sql;
mysql> grant all on REGISTRY_LOCAL1.* TO regadmin@"carbondb.mysql-wso2.com" identified by "regadmin";
 
mysql> create database REGISTRY_LOCAL2;
mysql> use REGISTRY_LOCAL2;
mysql> source <EI_HOME>/dbscripts/mysql.sql;
mysql> grant all on REGISTRY_LOCAL2.* TO regadmin@"carbondb.mysql-wso2.com" identified 
by "regadmin";
```
About using MySQL in different operating systems
For users of Microsoft Windows, when creating the database in MySQL, it is important to specify the character set as latin1. Failure to do this may result in an error (error code: 1709) when starting your cluster. This error occurs in certain versions of MySQL (5.6.x) and is related to the UTF-8 encoding. MySQL originally used the latin1 character set by default, which stored characters in a 2-byte sequence. However, in recent versions, MySQL defaults to UTF-8 to be friendlier to international users. Hence, you must use latin1 as the character set as indicated below in the database creation commands to avoid this problem. Note that this may result in issues with non-latin characters (like Hebrew, Japanese, etc.). The following is how your database creation command should look.
```
mysql> create database <DATABASE_NAME> character set latin1;
```
For users of other operating systems, the standard database creation commands will suffice. For these operating systems, the following is how your database creation command should look.
```
mysql> create database <DATABASE_NAME>;
```
Create and configure the MB_DB database, which is specific to the message broker profile using the following commands:

<EI_HOME>, username and password are the same as those you specified in the previous steps.
```
mysql> create database wso2_mb;
mysql> use wso2_mb;
mysql> source <EI_HOME>/dbscripts/mb-store/mysql-mb.sql;
mysql> grant all on wso2_mb.* TO username@localhost identified by "password";
```

Mounting the registry

Add the following configurations to the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/registry.xml file of each WSO2 EI node to configure the shared registry database and mounting details. This ensures that the shared registry for governance and configurations (i.e., the REGISTRY_DB database) mounts on both WSO2 EI nodes.

Note the following when adding these configurations:

The existing dbConfig called wso2registry must not be removed.
The datasourceyouspecifyin the <dbConfig name="sharedregistry"> tag must match the JNDI Config name you specify in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml file.
The registry mount path denotes the type of registry. For example, ”/_system/config” refers to configuration Registry, and "/_system/governance" refers to the governance registry.
The <dbconfig> entry enables you to identify the datasource you configured in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml file. The unique name "shared registry" referstothatdatasource entry.
The <remoteInstance> section refers to an external registry mount. Specify the read-only/read-write nature of this instance, caching configurations and the registry root location in this section.
Also, specify the cache ID in the <remoteInstance> section. This enables caching to function properly in the clustered environment.

Cache ID is the same as the JDBC connection URL of the registry database. This value is the Cache ID of the remote instance. It should be in the format of $database_username@$database_url, where $database_username is the username of the remote instance database and $database_url is the remote instance database URL. This cacheID denotes the enabled cache. In this case, the database it should connect to is REGISTRY_DB, which is the database shared across all the nodes. You can find that in the mounting configurations of the same datasource that is being used.
Define a unique name in the <id> tag for each remote instance. This is then referred to from mount configurations. In the above example, the unique ID for the remote instance is "instanceId".
Specify the actual mount path and target mount path in each of the mounting configurations. The target path can be any meaningful name. In this instance, it is "/_system/config".

Configuring a message broker profile node

It is vital to synchronize time across all the Broker nodes in the cluster to make them function properly.

Do the following configurations for all nodes of your cluster.

Configure the datasources to point to the REGISTRY_LOCAL1, WSO2_REGISTRY_DB, and WSO2_USER_DB databases as follows in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml file as follows:

Replace the username, password, and database URL of your MySQL environment accordingly.

<datasources-configuration xmlns:svns="http://org.wso2.securevault/configuration"> 
     <providers> 
        <provider>org.wso2.carbon.ndatasource.rdbms.RDBMSDataSourceReader</provider> 
    </providers> 
    <datasources> 
        <datasource> 
            <name>REGISTRY_LOCAL1</name> 
            <description>The datasource used for registry- local</description> 
            <jndiConfig> 
                <name>jdbc/WSO2CarbonDB</name> 
            </jndiConfig> 
            <definition type="RDBMS"> 
                <configuration> 
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/REGISTRY_LOCAL1?autoReconnect=true</url> 
                    <username>regadmin</username> 
                    <password>regadmin</password> 
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName> 
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive> 
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait> 
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow> 
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery> 
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval> 
                </configuration> 
            </definition> 
        </datasource> 
        <datasource> 
            <name>REGISTRY_DB</name> 
            <description>The datasource used for registry- config/governance</description> 
            <jndiConfig> 
                <name>jdbc/WSO2RegistryDB</name> 
            </jndiConfig> 
            <definition type="RDBMS"> 
                <configuration> 
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/REGISTRY_DB?autoReconnect=true</url> 
                    <username>regadmin</username> 
                    <password>regadmin</password> 
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName> 
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive> 
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait> 
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow> 
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery> 
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval> 
                </configuration> 
            </definition> 
        </datasource> 
         <datasource> 
            <name>WSO2_USER_DB</name> 
            <description>The datasource used for registry and user manager</description> 
            <jndiConfig> 
                <name>jdbc/WSO2UMDB</name> 
            </jndiConfig> 
            <definition type="RDBMS"> 
                <configuration> 
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/WSO2_USER_DB</url> 
                    <username>regadmin</username> 
                    <password>regadmin</password> 
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName> 
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive> 
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait> 
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow> 
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery> 
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval> 
                </configuration> 
            </definition> 
        </datasource> 
   </datasources> 
</datasources-configuration>

Repeat this configuration on the second WSO2 EI node to configure the datasources to point to the REGISTRY_LOCAL2, WSO2_REGISTRY_DB, and WSO2_USER_DB databases as follows: (Change the username, password, and database URL as needed for your environment):

<datasources-configuration xmlns:svns="http://org.wso2.securevault/configuration">     
    <providers>
        <provider>org.wso2.carbon.ndatasource.rdbms.RDBMSDataSourceReader</provider>
    </providers>
    <datasources>
        <datasource>
            <name>REGISTRY_LOCAL2</name>
            <description>The datasource used for registry- local</description>
            <jndiConfig>
                <name>jdbc/WSO2CarbonDB</name>
            </jndiConfig>
            <definition type="RDBMS">
                <configuration>
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/REGISTRY_LOCAL2?autoReconnect=true</url>
                    <username>regadmin</username>
                    <password>regadmin</password>
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName>
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive>
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait>
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow>
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery>
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval>
                </configuration>
            </definition>
        </datasource>
        <datasource>
            <name>REGISTRY_DB</name>
            <description>The datasource used for registry- config/governance</description>
            <jndiConfig>
                <name>jdbc/WSO2RegistryDB</name>
            </jndiConfig>
            <definition type="RDBMS">
                <configuration>
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/REGISTRY_DB?autoReconnect=true</url>
                    <username>regadmin</username>
                    <password>regadmin</password>
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName>
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive>
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait>
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow>
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery>
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval>
                </configuration>
            </definition>
        </datasource>
         <datasource>
            <name>WSO2_USER_DB</name>
            <description>The datasource used for registry and user manager</description>
            <jndiConfig>
                <name>jdbc/WSO2UMDB</name>
            </jndiConfig>
            <definition type="RDBMS">
                <configuration>
                    <url>jdbc:mysql://carbondb.mysql-wso2.com:3306/WSO2_USER_DB</url>
                    <username>regadmin</username>
                    <password>regadmin</password>
                    <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName>
                    <maxActive>50</maxActive>
                    <maxWait>60000</maxWait>
                    <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow>
                    <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery>
                    <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval>
                </configuration>
            </definition>
        </datasource>
   </datasources>
</datasources-configuration>

Add the following configuration in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/user-mgt.xml file to configure the user stores.

Enter the datasource information for the user store that you configured in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/ datasources /master- datasources . xml file. You can change the admin username and password as well. However, you should do this before starting the server.
```
<Configuration>
    <AddAdmin>true</AddAdmin>
    <AdminRole>admin</AdminRole>
    <AdminUser>
        <UserName>admin</UserName>
        <Password>admin</Password>
    </AdminUser>
    <EveryOneRoleName>everyone</EveryOneRoleName>
    <Property name="dataSource">jdbc/WSO2UMDB</Property>
</Configuration>
```

Remove or uncomment the default H2-based WSO2_MB_STORE_DB following configuration in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml file.

<datasource>
    <name>WSO2_MB_STORE_DB</name>
    <description>The datasource used for message broker database</description>
    <jndiConfig>
        <name>WSO2MBStoreDB</name>
    </jndiConfig>
    <definition type="RDBMS">
        <configuration>
            <url>jdbc:h2:repository/database/WSO2MB_DB;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE;LOCK_TIMEOUT=60000</url>
            <username>wso2carbon</username>
            <password>wso2carbon</password>
            <driverClassName>org.h2.Driver</driverClassName>
            <maxActive>50</maxActive>
            <maxWait>60000</maxWait>
            <testOnBorrow>true</testOnBorrow>
            <validationQuery>SELECT 1</validationQuery>
            <validationInterval>30000</validationInterval>
            <defaultAutoCommit>false</defaultAutoCommit>
        </configuration>
    </definition>
</datasource>

Uncomment or add the following WSO2_MB_STORE_DB configuration in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml file based on your DBMS type.

Update the JDBC URL to correctly point to your database and enter the username and password for your database user with the proper permissions.
Uncomment or add the following configuration in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/broker.xml file. (Enter the message store based on your database type and Andes context store).
Edit the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/axis2/axis2.xml file as follows to set up the cluster configurations.
- Enable clustering for this node as follows: <clustering class="org.wso2.carbon.core.clustering.hazelcast.HazelcastClusteringAgent" enable="true">
- Set the membership scheme to "wka" to enable the well-known address registration method. (This node sends cluster initiation messages to the WKA members):
  <parameter name="membershipScheme">wka</parameter>
- Specify the name of the cluster this node will join as folows: <parameter name="domain">wso2.ei.domain</parameter>
- Specify the host to communicate cluster messages as follows: <parameter name="localMemberHost">xxx.xxx.xxx.xx2</parameter>
- Specify the port to communicate cluster messages as follows: <parameter name="localMemberPort">4100</parameter>
  
  This port number is not affected by the port offset value specified in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/carbon. xml file. If this port number is already assigned to another server, the clustering framework automatically increments this port number. However, if there are two servers running on the same machine, ensure that a unique port is set for each server.
- Specify the well-known members as follows: (The port value for the WKA node must be the same value as it's localMemberPort (in this case it is 4100).
  
  You can also use IP address ranges for the hostname (e.g., 192.168.1.2-10). However, you can define a range only for the last portion of the IP address. Smaller the range, the faster the time it takes to discover members since each node has to scan a lesser number of potential members.

Add the following thrift-related configurations in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/broker.xml file.

This file is the root configuration file of brokering. Do the changes you do to this file in all the broker profile nodes. Configure the thriftServerHost value to point to the IP address of the message broker profile node.

<coordination>
    <nodeID>default</nodeID>
    <thriftServerHost>192.168.0.103</thriftServerHost>
    <thriftServerPort>7611</thriftServerPort>
	<thriftSOTimeout>0</thriftSOTimeout>
</coordination>

Follwingaredetails on these configurations.

Configuration	Description
`coordination`	This configuration is related to brokering thrift communications.
`nodeID`	In a clustered deployment, an ID is assigned to each brokering node via the cluster node identifier. This element can be used to override the cluster node identifier for this brokering node. If the value for this element is left as `default`, the default node ID is generated using the IP and a universally unique identifier (UUID). The node ID of each member in a cluster must be unique.
`thriftServerHost`	This is a sub-element of the `<coordination>` tag. WSO2 EI uses Apache Thrift for communications relating to message delivery. Therefore, an Apache Thrift server is started in each brokering node in a clustered deployment. This element should point to the IP address of the Apache Thrift server. This should point to the IP address of the brokering node that hosts the thrift server. The default value for this is `localhost`. For example, if you are configuring a brokering node hosted in 192.168.0.102 as the thrift server, this value should be 192.168.0.102.
`thriftServerPort`	This is another sub-element of the `<coordination>` tag. This should point to the port of the thrift server in the message broker profile. The default port is 7611. It is recommended to use this port for all broker nodes in your cluster.
`thriftSOTimeout`	This is used to handle half-open TCP connections between the broker nodes in a cluster. In such situations, the socket may need to have a timeout value to invalidate the connection. (in milliseconds). A timeout of zero is interpreted as an infinite timeout.

Testing the cluster

Follow the steps below to test the cluster.

Restart the configured load balancer.
Deploy artifacts to each product deployment location.

Use a deployment synchronization mechanism to synchronize the artifacts in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/repository/deployment/ directory. Always deploy artifacts first to the WSO2 EI server profile node with the registry configured as read/write. Next, deploy the artifacts to the other nodes.
Execute the following command and start both WSO2 EI nodes: sh <EI_HOME>/bin/broker.sh
Check for ‘member joined’ log messages in all consoles.
Additional information on logs and new nodes

When you terminate one node, all nodes identify that the node has left the cluster. The same applies when a new node joins the cluster. If you want to add another new node, copy existing node without any changes if you are running it on a new server (such as xxx.xxx.xxx.184). If you intend to use the new node on a server where another WSO2 product is running, use a copy of node and change the port offset accordingly in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/carbon.xml file. You also have to change localMemberPort in the <EI_HOME>/wso2/broker/conf/axis2/axis2.xml file if that product has clustering enabled. Also, map all hostnames to the relevant IP addresses when creating a new node. The log messages indicate if the new node joins the cluster.
Access the Management Console through the LB using the following URL: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx2:443/carbon
Test load distribution via the following URLs: http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx3:80/ or https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx3:443/
Add a sample proxy service with the log mediator in the inSequence so that it will display logs in the terminals, and then observe the cluster messages sent.
Send a request to the endpoint through the load balancer to verify that the proxy service is activated only on the active node(s) while the nodes remain passive. This is to test that the load balancer manages the active and passive states of the nodes, activating nodes as needed and leaving the rest in passive mode. For example, you would send the request to the following URL: http://{Load_Balancer_Mapped_URL_for_worker}/services/{Sample_Proxy_Name}

Tuning performance of the cluster

Follow the steps below to tune performance of the cluster:

The below example parameter values might not be the optimal values for the specific hardware configurations in your environment. Therefore, it is recommended to carry out load tests on your environment to tune the load balancer and other configurations accordingly.

Change the following default memory allocation settings for the server node and the JVM tuning parameters in the server startup scripts (i.e., the <EI_HOME>/bin/broker.sh or <EI_HOME>/bin/broker.bat file) according to the expected server load: -Xms256m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m
Modify important system files, which affect all programs running on the server. It is recommended to familiarize yourself with these files using Unix/Linux documentation before editing them.