I have a system written in akka and we use akka-remote to communicate over the network.
For now we need to run two actor systems in docker containers deployed on one machine and one actor system deployed on another machine without docker.
Communication with actors in docker or behined a NAT is well known problem and is described here: https://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/remoting.html#akka-behind-nat-or-in-a-docker-container.
Usage of bing-host and bind-port does not resolve our problem because we communicate with actors both from the same docker network and from outside, so in such case actors from outside communicate properly, but messages from actors from the same docker network are dropping.
So we consider to use the akka cluster, but I’m not sure if it will solve our problems.
Could you advise me how should I solve this problem?
We always recommend using akka cluster over remoting directly.
I’d also recommend not using remote messaging for external access. Instead use HTTP, gRPC or a message broker so that external protocols carefully considered. The external protocol can be converted into internal messaging but your clients then won’t be as tightly coupled.