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19.2.2. For clients running outside the Enterprise Application Platform

The JNDI client needs to be aware of the HA-JNDI cluster. You can pass a list of JNDI servers (i.e., the nodes in the HA-JNDI cluster) to the java.naming.provider.url JNDI setting in the jndi.properties file. Each server node is identified by its IP address and the JNDI port number. The server nodes are separated by commas (see Section 19.3, “JBoss configuration” for how to configure the servers and ports). 
java.naming.provider.url=server1:1100,server2:1100,server3:1100,server4:1100
When initializing, the JNP client code will try to get in touch with each server node from the list, one after the other, stopping as soon as one server has been reached. It will then download the HA-JNDI stub from this node.

Note

There is no load balancing behavior in the JNP client lookup process itself. It just goes through the provider lists and uses the first available server to obtain the stub. The HA-JNDI provider list only needs to contain a subset of HA-JNDI nodes in the cluster; once the HA-JNDI stub is downloaded, the stub will include information on all the available servers. A good practice is to include a set of servers such that you are certain that at least one of those in the list will be available.
The downloaded smart proxy contains the list of currently running nodes and the logic to load balance naming requests and to fail-over to another node if necessary. Furthermore, each time a JNDI invocation is made to the server, the list of targets in the proxy interceptor is updated (only if the list has changed since the last call).
If the property string java.naming.provider.url is empty or if all servers it mentions are not reachable, the JNP client will try to discover a HA-JNDI server through a multicast call on the network (auto-discovery). See Section 19.3, “JBoss configuration” for how to configure auto-discovery on the JNDI server nodes. Through auto-discovery, the client might be able to get a valid HA-JNDI server node without any configuration. Of course, for auto-discovery to work, the network segment(s) between the client and the server cluster must be configured to propagate such multicast datagrams.

Note

By default the auto-discovery feature uses multicast group address 230.0.0.4 and port 1102.
In addition to the java.naming.provider.url property, you can specify a set of other properties. The following list shows all clustering-related client side properties you can specify when creating a new InitialContext. (All of the standard, non-clustering-related environment properties used with regular JNDI are also available.)
  • java.naming.provider.url: Provides a list of IP addresses and port numbers for HA-JNDI provider nodes in the cluster. The client tries those providers one by one and uses the first one that responds.
  • jnp.disableDiscovery: When set to true, this property disables the automatic discovery feature. Default is false.
  • jnp.partitionName: In an environment where multiple HA-JNDI services bound to distinct clusters (a.k.a. partitions), are running, this property allows you to ensure that your client only accepts automatic-discovery responses from servers in the desired partition. If you do not use the automatic discovery feature (i.e. jnp.disableDiscovery is true), this property is not used. By default, this property is not set and the automatic discovery selects the first HA-JNDI server that responds, regardless of the cluster partition name.
  • jnp.discoveryTimeout: Determines how many milliseconds the context will wait for a response to its automatic discovery packet. Default is 5000 ms.
  • jnp.discoveryGroup: Determines which multicast group address is used for the automatic discovery. Default is 230.0.0.4. Must match the value of the AutoDiscoveryAddress configured on the server side HA-JNDI service. Note that the server side HA-JNDI service by default listens on the address specified via the -u startup switch, so if -u is used on the server side (as is recommended), jnp.discoveryGroup will need to be configured on the client side.
  • jnp.discoveryPort: Determines which multicast port is used for the automatic discovery. Default is 1102. Must match the value of the AutoDiscoveryPort configured on the server side HA-JNDI service.
  • jnp.discoveryTTL: specifies the TTL (time-to-live) for autodiscovery IP multicast packets. This value represents the number of network hops a multicast packet can be allowed to propagate before networking equipment should drop the packet. Despite its name, it does not represent a unit of time.