Message router based on Apache Qpid.

Quickstarts

Simple 2-node AMQ Interconnect 1.7 router network on OpenShift 3.11 (with inter-router SSL, no Operators)

What this deploys:

  • A 2-node router network (mesh)
  • Creates a root CA and certificates for inter-router connections - i.e. connections between Interconnect routers
  • The Operator can be used to deploy Interconnect from OCP 4.0 onwards.
  • For a non-operator deployment, the Interconnect container image v1.3 still includes some OpenShift templates, which we can use as a base and customise to fit.
  • Clients will authenticate to the routers using SASL, not certificates
MYPROJECT=amq-demo
IMAGE_STREAM_NAMESPACE=amq-demo
ROUTER_NAME=myrouter

oc new-project ${MYPROJECT}

oc create secret docker-registry redhat-registry-secret [email protected] --docker-password=yourpassword --docker-server=registry.redhat.io -n ${IMAGE_STREAM_NAMESPACE}

oc import-image amq-interconnect:latest -n ${IMAGE_STREAM_NAMESPACE} --from=registry.redhat.io/amq7/amq-interconnect:1.7 --confirm

Create CA certs for inter-router and client/server connections:

# Create a CA certificate for inter-router connections
mkdir internal-certs
openssl genrsa -out internal-certs/ca-key.pem 2048
openssl req -new -batch -key internal-certs/ca-key.pem -subj "/C=GB/ST=London/L=London/O=Acme plc/OU=Head Office/CN=acmeplc.xyz" -out internal-certs/ca-csr.pem
openssl x509 -req -in internal-certs/ca-csr.pem -signkey internal-certs/ca-key.pem -out internal-certs/ca.crt

# Create a certificate for the router, signed by the CA.
openssl genrsa -out internal-certs/tls.key 2048
openssl req -new -batch -subj "/CN=${ROUTER_NAME}.${MYPROJECT}.svc.cluster.local" -key internal-certs/tls.key -out internal-certs/server-csr.pem
openssl x509 -req -in internal-certs/server-csr.pem -CA internal-certs/ca.crt -CAkey internal-certs/ca-key.pem -out internal-certs/tls.crt -CAcreateserial

oc create secret generic ${ROUTER_NAME}-inter-router-certs --from-file=tls.crt=internal-certs/tls.crt  --from-file=tls.key=internal-certs/tls.key  --from-file=ca.crt=internal-certs/ca.crt -n ${MYPROJECT}

# Create a CA certificate for client connections.
mkdir client-certs
openssl genrsa -out client-certs/ca-key.pem 2048
openssl req -new -batch -key client-certs/ca-key.pem -out client-certs/ca-csr.pem -subj "/C=GB/ST=Manchester/L=Manchester/O=ClientCo plc/OU=Head Office/CN=ClientCo"
openssl x509 -req -in client-certs/ca-csr.pem -signkey client-certs/ca-key.pem -out client-certs/ca.crt

oc create secret generic ${ROUTER_NAME}-client-ca --from-file=ca.crt=client-certs/ca.crt -n ${MYPROJECT}

# Optional - Create a secret to allow a client application to authenticate to the routers using certificates
openssl genrsa -out client-certs/tls.key 2048
openssl req -new -batch -subj "/CN=messaging-client" -key client-certs/tls.key -out client-certs/client-csr.pem
openssl x509 -req -in client-certs/client-csr.pem -CA client-certs/ca.crt -CAkey client-certs/ca-key.pem -out client-certs/tls.crt -CAcreateserial

# Start with the Interconnect 1.3 template and add some extra bits
AZ_KEY=kubernetes.io/hostname
AZ_VALUE=node-0.sharedocp311cns.lab.example.com

oc process -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jboss-container-images/amq-interconnect-1-openshift-image/amq-interconnect-1.3/templates/amq-interconnect-1-tls-auth.yaml \
  -p APPLICATION_NAME=${ROUTER_NAME} \
  -p INTER_ROUTER_CERTS_SECRET=${ROUTER_NAME}-inter-router-certs \
  -p CLIENT_CA_SECRET=${ROUTER_NAME}-client-ca \
  -p IMAGE_STREAM_NAMESPACE=${IMAGE_STREAM_NAMESPACE} \
  | oc apply -n ${MYPROJECT} -f -

To access the console:

xdg-open <https://$(oc get route ${ROUTER_NAME}-console -o template --template='{{.spec.host}}')

# log in with:
# Address=<console URL>
# Port=443
# Username=admin@${ROUTER_NAME}
# ROUTER_PASSWORD=$(oc get secret ${ROUTER_NAME}-users -o template --template='{{.data.admin}}' | base64 -d -)

To delete all related objects once you’ve finished:

oc delete svc,dc,sa,rolebinding,cm,secret,route -l application=${ROUTER_NAME}
oc delete secret ${ROUTER_NAME}-client-ca ${ROUTER_NAME}-inter-router-certs

Concepts

Connection roles

  • Use role=inter-router on a listener if it is an interior router accepting connections from other interior routers
  • Use role=edge on a listener if it is an interior router accepting connections from edge routers.

Edge vs interior routers

An interior router generally has:

  • A listener on 55671, role=inter-router, authenticatePeer=true and an SSL profile configured, for accepting connections from other interior routers.
  • A listener on 45672, role=edge, for accepting connections from edge routers.
  • “Interior routers establish connections with each other and automatically compute the lowest cost paths across the network”

An edge router will have:

  • A listener on 5672, role=normal, for accepting connections from external clients.
  • A connector to the interior routers (e.g. router-mesh)
  • “Edge routers do not participate in the routing protocol or route computation.”

Using the web console

In the Topology diagram/view:

  • Artemis brokers are rendered uniquely based on the name of the broker as specified in broker.xml. So, if two separate brokers in a mesh have the same name, they will appear as one broker in the diagram, regardless of whether they have different hostnames.

Interconnect 1.7

The router is configured using the config file qdrouterd.conf:

  • Configured by providing it in the env var QDROUTERD_CONF
  • Located on the file system at /opt/interconnect/etc/qdrouterd.conf
  • Users: /etc/qpid-dispatch/sasl-users/ and /tmp/qdrouterd.sasldb

Cookbook

Check the auto-mesh query results generated by the startup script

Auto-mesh discovers other routers, either by querying the project/namespace (QUERY), or by deriving the other pods’ IDs in the StatefulSet (INFER), and adds connectors for them to the qdrouterd.conf file. To find what connectors are added by auto-mesh, just tail the conf files:

for pod in $(oc get pods -l application=router | awk 'NR>1 {print $1}'); do oc exec $pod -- tail -n 20 /opt/interconnect/etc/qdrouterd.conf; done

Check router connections

for pod in $(oc get pods -l application=router-mesh -o name); do oc exec $pod qdstat; done

Troubleshooting

Can’t connect to a router from the AMQ Interconnect console. “There was a connection error: Unable to connect to amq-interconnect-console.example.com:80” is shown on screen, and in the Javascript console logs: “QDR-main: failed to auto-connect to amqc-tdonohue-amq-demo.example.com:80”

  • Note that the web console uses Websockets to connect to the web console port of the router (see “Attempting AMQP over websockets connection using address:port of browser (amqc-tdonohue-amq-demo.example.com:80)” in the console logs)
  • Using public wifi can break this connection, if a dumb proxy is in the middle. Look for Cache-Miss responses in the Javascript console. Use a different connection if possible (e.g. mobile tethering)

Router doesn’t start automesh properly - this is seen in the logs: “Traceback (most recent call last): File “/opt/interconnect/bin/auto_mesh.py”, line 241, in module connectors = query() … File “/opt/interconnect/bin/auto_mesh.py”, line 226, in query … si = ip_list.index(ip) … ValueError: ‘10.254.4.107’ is not in list .. Error configuring automesh: ‘10.254.4.107’ is not in list”`

  • The startup script for AMQ Interconnect uses the Kubernetes API to find other router pods in the namespace. Ensure that the Pod is running under a Service Account which has permissions (view role) to get pods in the namespace.
  • The startup script discovers other router pods by looking for pods which have the label application=your-router-name. Ensure that the pods (or Deployment.spec.template) have that label assigned, or else the script won’t discover itself or other pods.