Passivation
Actors can be passivated when they are idle after some period of time. Passivated actors(including descendants) are removed from the actor system to free-up resources. When cluster mode is enabled, passivated actors are removed from the entire cluster.
Passivation is crucial in large-scale or distributed systems to:
Avoid memory/resource leaks.
Clean up unused actors.
Keep actor lifecycles predictable.
Balance load over time.
GoAkt introduces a flexible and pluggable actor passivation mechanism through the WithPassivationStrategy option. This gives developers fine-grained control over how and when inactive or overloaded actors are automatically passivated to free up system resources.
Passivation Strategies
GoAkt comes with the following passivation strategies:
Time-Based Passivation: This strategy automatically passivates (i.e., stops) an actor if it has not received any messages within a configurable time duration. This is the default strategy with
two minutesduration.Message Count-Based Passivation: This strategy passivates an actor after processing a specific number of messages.
Runtime Control
Passivation can be dynamically paused or resumed at runtime using built-in system messages:
PausePassivation: Temporarily disable passivation for an actor
ResumePassivation: Re-enable passivation for an actor
This feature is useful for workflows that require uninterrupted actor activity for a period of time (e.g., during long transactions or event replay).
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