Deploying High-Availability Messaging with WildFly and AMQ 7 on OpenShift

In this guide, you will learn how to configure a WildFly server connected to a remote AMQ 7 cluster on OpenShift using operators.

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you need:

  • Roughly 20 minutes

  • JDK 17+ installed with JAVA_HOME configured appropriately

  • Apache Maven 3.9+

  • Access to an OpenShift cluster (consider using the 'Self-managed' variant for a local development environment, available for free at Red Hat OpenShift)

  • OpenShift CLI tool

  • Podman (Docker is also compatible with minor adjustments)

Log Into the OpenShift Cluster

Before we can deploy our application, we need to log in to an OpenShift cluster. You can log in via the OpenShift CLI:

oc login -u myUserName

Alternatively, you can log in using an API token:

oc login --token=myToken --server=myServerUrl

You can request the token via the Copy Login Command link in the OpenShift web console.

If you don’t already have a project created, you can create one using:

oc new-project myProjectName

Install and deploy AMQ 7 using an operator

To install the AMQ 7 Operator, follow the instructions in the Red Hat documentation: Installing the Operator using OperatorHub

Next, create a file named broker.yaml with the following content to deploy the AMQ 7 cluster:

apiVersion: broker.amq.io/v1beta1
kind: ActiveMQArtemis
metadata:
  name: amq-broker
  application: amq-broker-app
spec:
  acceptors:
    - name: acceptor
      protocols: core,amqp
      port: 61616
      sslEnabled: false
      enabledProtocols: TLSv1,TLSv1.1,TLSv1.2
      needClientAuth: true
      wantClientAuth: true
      verifyHost: true
      sslProvider: JDK
      sniHost: localhost
      expose: true
      anycastPrefix: jms.queue.
      multicastPrefix: /topic/
  console:
    expose: true
  deploymentPlan:
    journalType: nio
    messageMigration: true
    persistenceEnabled: true
    requireLogin: false
    size: 2
    storage:
      size: "1Gi"
  upgrades:
    enabled: false
    minor: false

This Custom Resource (CR) file configures an AMQ 7 cluster with two brokers deployed as a StatefulSet. This setup ensures high availability because, in the event of a pod failure, the StatefulSet will automatically restart the failed pod. However, to maintain data integrity, Persistent Volumes must be configured to store the messaging journal. Without them, messages will be lost during restarts.

Additionally, the messageMigration: true setting enables the graceful scaling down of AMQ 7 pods. This ensures that messages from the scaled-down node are migrated to another node in the cluster, preventing data loss.

Run following command to deploy AMQ 7 on OpenShift:

oc create -f broker.yaml

Check that AMQ 7 brokers are in Running state by checking running pods:

$ oc get pods
NAME                                            READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
amq-broker-ss-0                                  1/1     Running   0          35m
amq-broker-ss-1                                  1/1     Running   0          36m
...

Build WildFly with a messaging application image using the WildFly Maven Plugin

We’re going to use the WildFly Quickstart: remote-helloworld-mdb to demonstrate how to build a trimmed WildFly server with a deployed messaging application. This quickstart leverages the WildFly Maven plugin to create a trimmed WildFly server and deploy the remote-helloworld-mdb.war application. It then produces a new container image based on the WildFly Runtime Image, incorporating the application.

This quickstart includes a HelloWorldMDBServletClient servlet, which sends messages to the HELLOWORLDMDBQueue queue, and a HelloWorldQueueMDB message-driven bean (MDB) that consumes messages from this queue.

To build the remote-helloworld-mdb quickstart, execute the following commands:

git clone git@github.com:wildfly/quickstart.git
cd quickstart/remote-helloworld-mdb
mvn clean package wildfly:image -Popenshift

The openshift profile is used to provide additional configuration for the WildFly server to work correctly on the Openshift environment. The Maven goal wildfly:image instructs the WildFly Maven Plugin to build a container image.

You can verify the newly built image by running:

$ podman images
REPOSITORY                                                                                                                TAG             IMAGE ID      CREATED         SIZE
localhost/remote-helloworld-mdb                                                                                           latest          cf9a174a5311  14 minutes ago  621 MB
...

Push WildFly image to the OpenShift registry

We need to expose the created image in the registry, so it can later be referenced from the Custom Resource for the WildFly Operator. We can utilize the integrated OpenShift registry and push the image into it through the ImageStream. First create a new ImageStream in your namespace:

oc create imagestream remote-helloworld-mdb

Now push your image into the ImageStream:

export REGISTRY="$(oc get routes -n openshift-image-registry default-route -o=jsonpath='{.spec.host}')"
podman login --tls-verify=false -u admin  -p $(oc whoami -t) $REGISTRY
podman tag localhost/remote-helloworld-mdb  $REGISTRY/$(oc config view --minify -o jsonpath='{..namespace}')/remote-helloworld-mdb
podman push --tls-verify=false $REGISTRY/$(oc config view --minify -o jsonpath='{..namespace}')/remote-helloworld-mdb

You can verify that the image was successfully pushed to the ImageStream by running:

$ oc get imagestream remote-helloworld-mdb
NAME                    IMAGE REPOSITORY                                                                       TAGS     UPDATED
remote-helloworld-mdb   default-route-openshift-image-registry.apps-crc.testing/mnovak/remote-helloworld-mdb   latest   17 minutes ago

Install the WildFly Operator

First we need to install the WildFly Operator to OpenShift cluster. Since the WildFly Operator is not included in the OpenShift OperatorHub by default, it must be added manually. Create the file community-catalog-source.yaml with content:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: CatalogSource
metadata:
  name: operatorhubio-catalog
  namespace: openshift-marketplace
spec:
  displayName: Community Operators
  grpcPodConfig:
    securityContextConfig: restricted
  image: quay.io/operatorhubio/catalog:latest
  publisher: OperatorHub.io
  sourceType: grpc
  updateStrategy:
    registryPoll:
      interval: 60m

Execute the following command to add the community catalog to the OperatorHub:

oc apply -f community-catalog-source.yaml

You can now install the WildFly Operator using the wildfly-operator.yml file:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: wildfly
spec:
  channel: alpha
  installPlanApproval: Automatic
  name: wildfly
  source: operatorhubio-catalog
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace

and install it by:

oc apply -f wildfly-operator.yml

You can now verify the installed operator in your namespace by inspecting the pods:

$ oc get pods
NAME                                            READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
wildfly-operator-d975cb47c-q9vgp                 1/1     Running   0          4m17s
...

Deploy the application image using the WildFly Operator

Now, we will configure the WildFly Operator to deploy the WildFly image with the messaging application. To achieve this, we will create a new file, wildfly-remote-messaging.yaml. In this file, the location of the AMQ 7 broker must be specified by setting the environment variables JBOSS_MESSAGING_CONNECTOR_HOST and JBOSS_MESSAGING_CONNECTOR_PORT:

apiVersion: wildfly.org/v1alpha1
kind: WildFlyServer
metadata:
  name: wildfly-remote-activemq
spec:
  applicationImage: "remote-helloworld-mdb:latest"
  replicas: 1
  env:
  - name: JBOSS_MESSAGING_CONNECTOR_HOST
    value: amq-broker-acceptor-0-svc
  - name: JBOSS_MESSAGING_CONNECTOR_PORT
    value: '61616'

and deploy it by:

oc apply -f wildfly-remote-messaging.yaml

You can now verify the deployed wildfly in your namespace by inspecting the pods:

$ oc get pods
NAME                                            READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
wildfly-remote-activemq-0                        1/1     Running   0          63s
...

Test the Application

We’re going to test the application by sending 5 messages to the HELLOWORLDMDBQueue to the AMQ 7 broker. Then we will check that the MDB consumed those messages from the queue:

curl http://$(oc get route wildfly-remote-activemq-route --template='{{ .spec.host }}')/remote-helloworld-mdb/HelloWorldMDBServletClient

This command invokes the HelloWorldMDBServletClient servlet deployed to WildFly to send messages. Check the server log to ensure they contain entries similar to the following:

$ oc logs wildfly-remote-activemq-0
...
13:39:27,846 INFO [class org.jboss.as.quickstarts.mdb.HelloWorldQueueMDB] (Thread-10 (ActiveMQ-client-global-threads)) Received Message from queue: This is message 1
13:39:27,860 INFO [class org.jboss.as.quickstarts.mdb.HelloWorldQueueMDB] (Thread-12 (ActiveMQ-client-global-threads)) Received Message from queue: This is message 3
13:39:27,863 INFO [class org.jboss.as.quickstarts.mdb.HelloWorldQueueMDB] (Thread-11 (ActiveMQ-client-global-threads)) Received Message from queue: This is message 2
13:39:27,874 INFO [class org.jboss.as.quickstarts.mdb.HelloWorldQueueMDB] (Thread-10 (ActiveMQ-client-global-threads)) Received Message from queue: This is message 4
13:39:27,878 INFO [class org.jboss.as.quickstarts.mdb.HelloWorldQueueMDB] (Thread-12 (ActiveMQ-client-global-threads)) Received Message from queue: This is message 5

The presence of these log entries in the server log confirms that the MDB successfully consumed messages from the HELLOWORLDMDBQueue from one of the clustered remote AMQ 7 broker.

What’s Next?

Now that you have deployed WildFly with a messaging application connected to AMQ 7, explore the following resources to enhance your understanding and further extend your deployment:

  • Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift: Dive deeper into deploying and managing AMQ Broker on OpenShift with detailed guides and best practices. Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift

  • WildFly Operator Repository: Learn more about the WildFly Operator, its features, and advanced configuration options directly from the official GitHub repository. WildFly Operator GitHub

  • WildFly Maven Plugin Documentation: Explore the WildFly Maven Plugin for automating deployment, configuration, and management of WildFly applications during your build process. WildFly Maven Plugin Documentation

These resources provide valuable insights and tools to optimize your WildFly and AMQ deployments, automate workflows, and build robust applications on OpenShift.

References

< Back to Guides

WildFly is fully open. All components are open source and follow a community-focused development process.

This website was built with Jekyll is hosted on Github Pages and is completely open source. If you want to make it better, fork it and show us what you’ve got.

Navigation
Contribute
Get Help
Find more Red Hat Middleware Community Projects
CC by 3.0 | Privacy Policy Sponsored by