Akka in Action

Chapter 14. Clustering

In this chapter

• Dynamically scaling actors in a cluster
• Sending messages into the cluster with cluster-aware routers
• Building a clustered Akka app

In chapter 6 you learned how to build a distributed application with a fixed number of nodes. The approach we took, using static membership, is simple but provides no out-of-the-box support for load balancing or failover. A cluster makes it possible to dynamically grow and shrink the number of nodes used by a distributed application, and removes the fear of a single point of failure.

Many distributed applications run in environments that aren’t completely under your control, like cloud computing platforms or data centers located across the world. The larger the cluster, ...