[rabbitmq-discuss] clustering question

Wed Mar 31 22:29:56 BST 2010

Hello all.  I just set up a rabbitmq cluster using the clustering setup guide on the website, and I can report that the guide was easy to follow and worked well.  However, I did have a question about a couple of statements made in the guide that I would like to clarify.

The guide says:

"RabbitMQ brokers tolerate the failure of individual nodes. Nodes can be started and stopped at will."

As well as:

"All data/state required for the operation of a RabbitMQ broker is replicated across all nodes, for reliability and scaling, with full ACID properties. An exception to this are message queues, which currently only reside on the node that created them, though they are visible and reachable from all nodes." 

So, from this I can assume that if one of my nodes go down the cluster will continue to operate, but how will that affect any queues that resided on the inoperative node?  If I publish a message that was meant for one of those queues will it fail?  Will clients that are subscribed to those queues continue to receive new messages?  I'd just like to understand what the behavior will be so that I can plan accordingly.

Thanks,
Ian