AMQP 1.0 Protocol Driver Deployment Guide

Introduction

The AMQP 1.0 Protocol Driver is a messaging transport backend supported in oslo.messaging. The driver maps the base oslo.messaging capabilities for RPC and Notification message exchange onto version 1.0 of the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP 1.0, ISO/IEC 19464). The driver is intended to support any messaging intermediary (e.g. broker or router) that implements version 1.0 of the AMQP protocol.

More detail regarding the AMQP 1.0 Protocol is available from the AMQP specification.

More detail regarding the driver’s implementation is available from the oslo specification.

Abstract

The AMQP 1.0 driver is one of a family of oslo.messaging backend drivers. It currently supports two types of message intermediaries. The first type is an AMQP 1.0 messaging broker and the second type is an AMQP 1.0 message router. The driver should support additional intermediary types in the future but may require additions to driver configuration parameters in order to do so.

Intermediary Type RPC Pattern Notify Pattern Message Treatment Topology
Message Router Yes Limited Direct Messaging Single or Mesh
Message Broker Yes Yes Store and Forward Single or Cluster

Direct Messaging

The direct messaging capabilities provided by the message router intermediary type are recommended for the oslo.messaging RPC messaging pattern.

Additionally, the message router intermediary may be used for the Notification messaging pattern with the consideration that notification messages will be dropped when there is no active consumer. The message router does not provide durability or store-and-forward capabilities for notification messages.

The driver can readily scale operation from working with a single instances of a message router to working with a large scale routed mesh interconnect topology.

Store and Forward

The store and forward capabilities provide by the message broker intermediary type are recommended for the oslo.message Notification messaging pattern. This driver is able to work with a single instance of a message broker or a clustered broker deployment.

Oslo.messaging provides a mechanism to configure separate backends for RPC and Notification communications. This document provides deployment and configuration information for use of this driver in oslo.messaging.

Addressing

A new address syntax was added to the driver to support efficient direct message routing. This new syntax will also work with a broker intermediary backend but is not compatible with the address syntax previously used by the driver. In order to allow backward compatibility, the driver will attempt to identify the intermediary type for the backend in use and will automatically select the ‘legacy’ syntax for broker-based backends or the new ‘routable’ syntax for router-based backends. An address mode configuration option is provided to override this dynamic behavior and force the use of either the legacy or routable address syntax.

Message Acknowledgement

A primary functional difference between a router and a broker intermediary type is when message acknowledgement occurs.

The router does not “store” the message hence it does not generate an acknowledgement. Instead the consuming endpoint is responsible for message acknowledgement and the router forwards the acknowledgement back to the sender. This is known as ‘end-to-end’ acknowledgement. In contrast, a broker stores then forwards the message so that message acknowledgement is performed in two stages. In the first stage, a message acknowledgement occurs between the broker and the Sender. In the second stage, an acknowledgement occurs between the Server and the broker.

This difference affects how long the Sender waits for the message transfer to complete.

                                                      +dispatch+
                                                      |  (3)   |
                                                      |        |
                                                      |        v
+--------------+    (1)    +----------+    (2)     +--------------+
|    Client    |---------->|  Router  |----------->|    Server    |
|   (Sender)   |<----------| (Direct) |<-----------|  (Listener)  |
+--------------+    (5)    +----------+    (4)     +--------------+

For example when a router intermediary is used, the following sequence occurs:

  1. The message is sent to the router
  2. The router forwards the message to the Server
  3. The Server dispatches the message to the application
  4. The Server indicates the acknowledgement via the router
  5. The router forwards the acknowledgement to the Sender

In this sequence, a Sender waits for the message acknowledgement until step (5) occurs.

                                                      +dispatch+
                                                      |  (4)   |
                                                      |        |
                                                      |        v
+--------------+    (1)    +----------+    (3)     +--------------+
|    Client    |---------->|  Broker  |----------->|    Server    |
|   (Sender)   |<----------| (Queue)  |<-----------|  (Listener)  |
+--------------+    (2)    +----------+    (5)     +--------------+

And when a broker intermediary is used, the following sequence occurs:

  1. The message is sent to the broker
  2. The broker stores the message and acknowledges the message to the Sender
  3. The broker sends the message to the Server
  4. The Server dispatches the message to the application
  5. The Server indicates the acknowledgement to the broker

In this sequence, a Sender waits for the message acknowledgement until step (2) occurs.

Therefore the broker-based Sender receives the acknowledgement earlier in the transfer than the routed case. However in the brokered case receipt of the acknowledgement does not signify that the message has been (or will ever be) received by the Server.

Batched Notifications Note Well

While the use of a router intermediary for oslo.messaging Notification is currently not recommended, it should be noted that the use of a router intermediary with batched notifications may exacerbate the acknowledgement wait time for a Sender.

For example, when a batched notification configuration is used where batch size is set to 100, the Server will wait until 100 notification messages are buffered (or timeout occurs) before dispatching the notifications to the application for message acknowledgement. Since each notifier client can have at most one message outstanding (e.g. pending acknowledgement), then if the total number of notifying clients are less than 100 the batch limit will never be met. This will effectively pause all notifying clients until the batch timeout expires.

Prerequisites

Protocol Engine

This driver uses the Apache QPID Proton AMQP 1.0 protocol engine. This engine consists of a platform specific library and a python binding. The driver does not directly interface with the engine API, as the API is a very low-level interface to the AMQP protocol. Instead, the driver uses the pure python Pyngus client API, which is layered on top of the protocol engine.

In order to run the driver the Proton Python bindings, Proton library, Proton header files, and Pyngus must be installed. Pre-built packages for both Pyngus and the Proton protocol engine are available for various Linux distributions (see packages below). It is recommended to use the pre-built packages if they are available for your platform.

The Proton package includes a C extension that links to the Proton library. If this library is not installed, then the Proton install script will attempt to download the necessary Proton C source files from the Apache repository and build the library locally.

In order to build the Proton C source locally, there are a number of tools and libraries that need to be present:

  • The tools and library necessary for Python development
  • The SWIG wrapper generator
  • The OpenSSL development libraries and headers
  • The Cyrus SASL development libraries and headers

Note well: Currently the Proton Pypi package only supports building the C extension on Linux systems.

Router Intermediary

This driver supports a router intermediary that supports version 1.0 of the AMQP protocol. The direct messaging capabilities provided by this intermediary type are recommended for oslo.messaging RPC.

The driver has been tested with qpid-dispatch-router router in a devstack environment. The version of qpid-dispatch-router must be at least 0.6.0. The qpid-dispatch-router also uses the Proton engine for its AMQP 1.0 support, so the Proton library must be installed on the system hosting the qpid-dispatch-router daemon.

Pre-built packages for the router are available. See packages below.

Broker Intermediary

This driver supports a broker intermediary that supports version 1.0 of the AMQP protocol. The store and forward capabilities provided by this intermediary type are recommended for oslo.messaging Notifications.

The driver has been tested with the qpidd broker in a devstack environment. The version of qpidd must be at least 0.34. qpidd also uses the Proton engine for its AMQP 1.0 support, so the Proton library must be installed on the system hosting the qpidd daemon.

Pre-built packages for the broker are available. See packages below.

See the oslo specification for additional information regarding testing done on the driver.

Configuration

Transport URL Enable

In oslo.messaging, the transport_url parameters define the OpenStack service backends for RPC and Notify. The url is of the form:

transport://user:pass@host1:port[,hostN:portN]/virtual_host

Where the transport value specifies the rpc or notification backend as one of amqp, rabbit, zmq, etc.

To specify and enable the AMQP 1.0 driver for RPC, in the section [DEFAULT] of the service configuration file, specify the ‘transport_url’ parameter:

[DEFAULT]
transport_url = amqp://username:password@routerhostname:5672

To specify and enable the AMQP 1.0 driver for Notify, in the section [NOTIFICATIONS] of the service configuration file, specify the ‘transport_url’ parameter:

[NOTIFICATIONS]
transport_url = amqp://username:password@brokerhostname:5672

Note, that if a ‘transport_url’ parameter is not specified in the [NOTIFICATIONS] section, the [DEFAULT] transport_url will be used for both RPC and Notify backends.

Driver Options

It is recommended that the default configuration options provided by the AMQP 1.0 driver be used. The configuration options can be modified in the oslo_messaging_amqp section of the service configuration file.

Connection Options

In section [oslo_messaging_amqp]:

  1. idle_timeout: Timeout in seconds for inactive connections. Default is disabled.
  2. connection_retry_interval: Seconds to pause before attempting to re-connect.
  3. connection_retry_backoff: Connection retry interval increment after unsuccessful failover attempt.
  4. connection_retry_interval_max: The maximum duration for a connection retry interval.

Message Send Options

In section [oslo_messaging_amqp]:

  1. link_retry_delay: Time to pause between re-connecting to an AMQP 1.0 link.
  2. default_reply_timeout: The deadline for an rpc reply message delivery.
  3. default_send_timeout: The deadline for an rpc cast or call message delivery.
  4. default_notify_timeout: The deadline for a sent notification message delivery.

Addressing Options

In section [oslo_messaging_amqp]:

  1. addressing_mode: Indicates addressing mode used by the driver.
  2. server_request_prefix: Legacy address prefix used when sending to a specific server.
  3. broadcast_prefix: Legacy broadcast prefix used when broadcasting to all servers.
  4. group_request_prefix: Legacy address prefix when sending to any server in a group.
  5. rpc_address_prefix: Routable address prefix for all generated RPC addresses.
  6. notify_address_prefix: Routable address prefix for all generated Notification addresses.
  7. multicast_address: Appended to address prefix when sending a fanout address.
  8. unicast_address: Appended to address prefix when sending to a particular RPC/Notification server.
  9. anycast_address: Appended to address prefix when sending to a group of consumers.
  10. default_notification_exchange: Exchange name used in notification addresses if not supplied by the application.
  11. default_rpc_exchange: Exchange name used in RPC addresses if not supplied by the application.

SSL Options

In section [oslo_messaging_amqp]:

  1. ssl_ca_file: A file containing the trusted Certificate Authority’s digital certificate (in PEM format). This certificate is used to authenticate the messaging backend.
  2. ssl_cert_file: A file containing a digital certificate (in PEM format) that is used to identify the driver with the messaging bus (i.e. client authentication).
  3. ssl_key_file:A file containing the private key used to sign the ssl_cert_file certificate (PEM format, optional if private key is stored in the certificate itself).
  4. ssl_key_password: The password used to decrypt the private key (not required if private key is not encrypted).

SASL Options

In section [oslo_messaging_amqp]:

  1. sasl_config_dir: Path to the directory that contains the SASL configuration.
  2. sasl_config_name: The name of SASL configuration file (without .conf suffix) in sasl_config_dir
  3. username: SASL user identifier for authentication with the message bus. Can be overridden by URL.
  4. password: Password for username

AMQP Generic Options (Note Well)

The AMQP 1.0 driver currently does not support the generic amqp options used by pre-1.0 drivers such as amqp_durable_queues or amqp_auto_delete.

qpid-dispatch-router

First, verify that the Proton library has been installed and is imported by the qpid-dispatch-router intermediary. This can be checked by running:

$ qdrouterd --help

and looking for references to qpid-dispatch include and config path options in the help text. If no qpid-dispatch information is listed, verify that the Proton libraries are installed and that the version of the qdrouterd is greater than or equal to 0.6.0.

Second, configure the address patterns used by the driver. This is done by adding the following to /etc/qpid-dispatch/qdrouterd.conf.

If the legacy syntax for the addressing mode is required, include the following:

address {
    prefix: unicast
    distribution: closest
}

address {
    prefix: exclusive
    distribution: closest
}

address {
    prefix: broadcast
    distribution: multicast
}

For the routable syntax addressing mode, include the following:

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/rpc/multicast
    distribution: multicast
}

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/rpc/unicast
    distribution: closest
}

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/rpc/anycast
    distribution: balanced
}

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/notify/multicast
    distribution: multicast
}

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/notify/unicast
    distribution: closest
}

address {
    prefix: openstack.org/om/notify/anycast
    distribution: balanced
}

Note well: For any customization of the address mode and syntax used, it is required that the address entity configurations in the /etc/qpid-dispatch/qdrouterd.conf be updated.

qpidd

First, verify that the Proton library has been installed and is imported by the qpidd broker. This can checked by running:

$ qpidd --help

and looking for the AMQP 1.0 options in the help text. If no AMQP 1.0 options are listed, verify that the Proton libraries are installed and that the version of qpidd is greater than or equal to 0.34.

Second, configure the default address patterns used by the driver for a broker-based backend. This is done by adding the following to /etc/qpid/qpidd.conf:

queue-patterns=exclusive
queue-patterns=unicast
topic-patterns=broadcast

These patterns, exclusive, unicast, and broadcast are the legacy addressing values used by the driver. These can be overridden via the driver configuration options if desired (see above). If manually overridden, update the qpidd.conf values to match.

DevStack Support

The plugin for the AMQP 1.0 oslo.messaging driver is supported by DevStack. The plugin supports the use of either the broker or router intermediary.

In local.conf [localrc] section, the devstack-plugin-amqp1 plugin repository must be enabled. For example:

[[local|localrc]]
enable_plugin amqp1 https://git.openstack.org/openstack/devstack-plugin-amqp1

Set the username and password variables if needed for the configuration:

AMQP1_USERNAME=queueuser
AMQP1_PASSWORD=queuepassword

To configure DevStack for operation of the router intermediary, set the AMQP1 service variable to “qdr”:

AMQP1_SERVICE=qdr

Alternatively, to configure DevStack for operation of the broker intermediary, set the AMQP1 service variable to “qpid”:

AMQP1_SERVICE=qpid

Platforms and Packages

PyPi

Packages for Pyngus pypi and the Proton pypi engine are available on Pypi.

RHEL and Fedora

Packages exist in EPEL for RHEL/Centos 7, and Fedora 24+. Unfortunately, RHEL/Centos 6 base packages include a very old version of qpidd that does not support AMQP 1.0. EPEL’s policy does not allow a newer version of qpidd for RHEL/Centos 6.

The following packages must be installed on the system running the intermediary daemon:

Intermediary Package
qdrouterd qpid-dispatch-router python-qpid-proton
qpidd qpid-cpp-server qpid-proton-c

qpidd daemon:

  • qpid-cpp-server (version 0.26+)
  • qpid-proton-c

The following packages must be installed on the systems running the services that use the new driver:

  • Proton libraries: qpid-proton-c-devel
  • Proton python bindings: python-qpid-proton
  • pyngus (via Pypi)

Debian and Ubuntu

Packages for the Proton library, headers, and Python bindings are available in the Debian/Testing repository. Proton packages are not yet available in the Ubuntu repository. The version of qpidd on both platforms is too old and does not support AMQP 1.0.

Until the proper package version arrive the latest packages can be pulled from the Apache Qpid PPA on Launchpad:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qpid/released

The following packages must be installed on the system running the qdrouterd daemon:

  • qdrouterd (version 0.6.0+)

The following packages must be installed on the system running the qpidd daemon:

  • qpidd (version 0.34+)

The following packages must be installed on the systems running the services that use the new driver:

  • Proton libraries: libqpid-proton2-dev
  • Proton python bindings: python-qpid-proton
  • pyngus (via Pypi)