Commanded supports running on a single node, or multiple nodes run as either a distributed Erlang cluster or as multiple single instance nodes.

Single node deployment

Running your app using Commanded on a single node requires no configuration as local is the default setting.

Multi node distributed Erlang deployment

To support deployment to a cluster of nodes and distributed Erlang you must configure:

1. A registry which supports distributed Erlang. The :global registry provided by Commanded or the Commanded Swarm registry library.
2. Phoenix's distributed pub/sub and presence platform to allow process distribution and communication amongst all nodes in the cluster.

:global registry

Use Erlang's :global name registration facility with distributed Erlang. The global name server starts automatically when a node is started. The registered names are stored in replica global name tables on every node. Thus, the translation of a name to a pid is fast, as it is always done locally.

Define the :global registry for your application:

defmodule MyApp.Application do
  use Commanded.Application,
    otp_app: :my_app,
    event_store: [
      adapter: Commanded.EventStore.Adapters.EventStore,
      event_store: MyApp.EventStore
    ],
    registry: :global
end

Or configure your application to use the :global registry in config:

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyApp.Application, registry: :global

Commanded Swarm registry

Add commanded_swarm_registry to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [{:commanded_swarm_registry, "~> 1.0"}]
end

Fetch mix dependencies:

Configure your application to use the Swarm registry:

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyApp.Application, registry: Commanded.Registration.SwarmRegistry

This uses the Swarm to distribute process amongst the available nodes in the cluster.

Phoenix pub/sub

First, add it as a dependency to your project's mix.exs file:

defp deps do
  [{:phoenix_pubsub, "~> 2.0"}]
end

Fetch mix deps and configure the pubsub settings for your application in the environment config file:

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyApp.Application,
  pubsub: [
    phoenix_pubsub: [
      adapter: Phoenix.PubSub.PG2,
      pool_size: 1
    ]
  ]

The PG2 adapter is preferable for cluster deployment since it is provided by Erlang and requires no further dependencies.

EventStore

If using PostgreSQL-based Elixir EventStore please also refer to its documentation about running on a clustering of nodes.

Multi node, but not distributed Erlang deployment

Running multiple nodes, but choosing not to connect the nodes together to form a distributed Erlang cluster, requires that you use the local registry and Phoenix's pub/sub library with its Redis adapter.

You must install and use Phoenix's pub/sub library, as described above.

Since the nodes aren't connected, you are required to use the Redis adapter as a way of communicating between the nodes. Therefore you will need to host a Redis instance for use by your app.

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyApp.Application,
  registry: :local,
  pubsub: [
    phoenix_pubsub: [
      adapter: Phoenix.PubSub.Redis,
      host: "localhost",
      port: 6379,
      node_name: "localhost"
    ]
  ]