If you configure FUSE ESB 4 to use a JDBC lock for failover (i.e. the following configuration) then ServiceMix will fail with the error: Could not obtain lock: FATAL: database "postgres;create=true" does not exist Configuration (in system.properties): [[ servicemix.lock=true servicemix.lock.class=org.apache.servicemix.kernel.main.DefaultJDBCLock servicemix.lock.level=50 servicemix.lock.delay=10 servicemix.lock.jdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/postgres servicemix.lock.jdbc.driver=org.postgresql.Driver servicemix.lock.jdbc.user=postgres servicemix.lock.jdbc.password=postgres servicemix.lock.jdbc.table=SERVICEMIX_LOCK servicemix.lock.jdbc.clustername=smx4 servicemix.lock.jdbc.timeout=30 ]] I've checked the Karaf code for JDBCLock, and the string ';created=true' is always being added to the jdbc URL. I suspect that this approach has only been tested with Derby? When used with PostgreSQL, the JDBC driver errantly thinks that this suffix is in fact part of the database name.