Messages for Durable Subscriber are not persisted with Distributed Topic

Question

Setup:
          - Weblogic 8.1 SP 6 cluster with two nodes on single Sun Solaris 5.8 host
          - Distributed topic destination, separate JMS server with separate filestore for each node
          - Standalone durable JMS client connecting to distributed topic destination using specific JNDI name.
          - Messages are persistent (msg.setJMSDeliveryMode(DeliveryMode.PERSISTENT). Delivery mode override for topic destinations is set to "Persistent"
          Test:
          1) Both nodes up, starting durable topic subscriber -> durable subscriber is visible in Weblogic console -> sending X messages -> X messages are received :-)
          2) Both nodes up, killing durable topic subscriber -> durable subscriber is still visible in Weblogic console -> sending X messages -> Messages Current Count for durable subscribers is set to X -> starting JMS client again
          2a) subscribing to same node as before -> console says durable subscriber is active again -> X messages are received :-)
          2b) subscribing to other node -> durable subscriber is automatically migrated by Weblogic to this node, console says that subscriber is active, but Messages Current Count is 0 (zero) -> 0 (zero) messages are received :_|
          Where are my X messages gone?
          Should I open a call or did I misunderstand the basics?
          Thanks, Peter

Answer 1

According to Bea Customer Support this is the normal behavior. If you kill a durable topic subscriber and reconnect it with the same id to another node, the old subscription is deleted and all messages still waiting to be delivered are gone.
          Lesson learned: If you need failover for the server AND client use JMS queues.
          Peter