Introduction
When deploying FME Flow (formerly FME Server) using Docker Compose, there is one FME engine service by default. This is beneficial as it allows for easy engine scaling. To scale engines using Docker Compose, use the command below, changing the number of engines to however many you’d like - license permitting.
docker compose up --scale fmeflowengine=4
The downside is that in order for Docker Compose to scale engines, the engine container hostnames must be set to the container ID.
This makes it very difficult to create and assign FME Flow engines to queues, as the container IDs will be different every time the container restarts or engines are scaled. As engines are assigned to queues by engine name, this can lead to an FME Flow engine ‘graveyard,’ where the list of engines will continuously grow as FME Flow does not know how to remove engines that have been shut down (and will never come back).
To use FME Flow Job Queues with a Docker deployment, we recommend following the steps in this article: FME Flow on Docker: Utilizing Engine Assignment and Job Routing.