You can always call UM with any of its single IP using nsp format (nsp://:). However you client (Java client, webMethods connection etc) will try to connect to that ip for JNDI lookup only. So for JNDI lookup purposes, that node has to be reacheable always. Once your client get the lookup, it will automatically fetch all the ips in the cluster using connection factories, and will use appropriate master to connect and send receive messages.
If you use comma seperated values of UM server endpoints, your client polls on each ip one by one until it connects to any one of the ip.
Hope this explains.
#webMethods#Universal-Messaging-Broker