Appendix E. Messaging Journal Configuration Elements

journal-directory

The directory where the message journal is located. The default value is BROKER_INSTANCE_DIR/data/journal.

For the best performance, the journal should be located on its own physical volume in order to minimize disk head movement. If the journal is on a volume that is shared with other processes that may be writing other files (for example, bindings journal, database, or transaction coordinator) then the disk head may well be moving rapidly between these files as it writes them, thus drastically reducing performance.

When using a SAN, each journal instance should be given its own LUN (logical unit).

create-journal-dir

If set to true, the journal directory will be automatically created at the location specified in journal-directory if it does not already exist. The default value is true.

journal-type

Valid values are NIO or ASYNCIO.

If set to NIO, the broker uses Java NIO interface to itsjournal. Set to ASYNCIO, and the broker will use the Linux asynchronous IO journal. If you choose ASYNCIO but are not running Linux or you do not have libaio installed then the broker will detect this and automatically fall back to using NIO.

journal-sync-transactional

If set to true, the broker flushes all transaction data to disk on transaction boundaries (that is, commit, prepare, and rollback). The default value is true.

journal-sync-non-transactional

If set to true, the broker flushes non-transactional message data (sends and acknowledgements) to disk each time. The default value is true.

journal-file-size

The size of each journal file in bytes. The default value is 10485760 bytes (10MiB).

journal-min-files

The minimum number of files the broker pre-creates when starting. Files are pre-created only if there is no existing message data.

Depending on how much data you expect your queues to contain at steady state, you should tune this number of files to match the total amount of data expected.

journal-pool-files

The system will create as many files as needed; however, when reclaiming files it will shrink back to journal-pool-files.

The default value is -1, meaning it will never delete files on the journal once created. The system cannot grow infinitely, however, as you are still required to use paging for destinations that can grow indefinitely.

journal-max-io

Controls the maximum number of write requests that can be in the IO queue at any one time. If the queue becomes full then writes will block until space is freed up.

When using NIO, this value should always be 1. When using AIO, the default value is 500. The total max AIO can’t be higher than the value set at the OS level (/proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr), which is usually at 65536.

journal-buffer-timeout

Controls the timeout for when the buffer will be flushed. AIO can typically withstand with a higher flush rate than NIO, so the system maintains different default values for both NIO and AIO.

The default value for NIO is 3333333 nanoseconds, or 300 times per second, and the default value for AIO is 50000 nanoseconds, or 2000 times per second.

journal-buffer-size

The size of the timed buffer on AIO. The default value is 490KiB.

journal-compact-min-files

The minimal number of files necessary before the broker compacts the journal. The compacting algorithm will not start until you have at least journal-compact-min-files. The default value is 10.

journal-compact-percentage

The threshold to start compacting. Journal data will be compacted if less than journal-compact-percentage is determined to be live data. Note also that compacting will not start until you have at least journal-compact-min-files data files on the journal. The default value is 30.