JGroups Protocol MERGE2

External

• JGroups Manual http://www.jgroups.org/manual/html/protlist.html#MERGE2
• JGroups Wiki http://community.jboss.org/wiki/JGroupsMERGE2

Internal

• JGroups

Overview

MERGE2 merges split groups.

Merging Process

If a group splits, MERGE2 detects the split and re-joins the group.

Split situations:

• A member is inactive (long GC), it is excluded from group, then comes back to life and it's part of an "older" view - the new view multicasted the coordinator does not include it.
• Real network partitions that leads to two subgroups with two coordinators.

The merge protocol is run by coordinator.

On the coordinator, the FindSubgroupsTask of the MERGE2 protocol periodically sends a FIND_INITIAL_MBRS down the stack, which is handled by the implementation of the Discovery protocol (PING, MPING, JDBC_PING, etc) usually by sending a GET_MBRS_REQ message. More about this process here PING GET_MBRS_REQ Requests.

The FIND_INITIAL_MBRS events (and consequently GET_MBRS_REQ messages) are sent at random intervals between 'min_interval' and 'max_interval' milliseconds.

If another coordinator for the same group receives this message, it will initiate a merge process. The merge process does not merge state. The app has to handle the callback to merge state.

Configuration

  <MERGE2 max_interval="100000" min_interval="20000"/>

max_interval

If 'max_interval' is smaller or equal with 'min_interval', we get a configuration error:

21:14:16,436 ERROR [MERGE2] @main max_interval has to be greater than min_interval

and the stack won't start.

Also See

MERGE3