In this lab we will create a RabbitMQ Cluster using the Rabbitmq-cluster Helm chart from the Catalog.

📘

For this lab, RabbitMQ Operator needs to be activated.

Creating the RabbitMQ Cluster

1. In the left sidebar click on Catalog.

2. Click on the rabbitmq-cluster item in the Catalog. This will take you to the page with the readme where you can see all specifications and definitions that you can use to create your RabbitMQ Cluster with Queues and Policies.

3. Click on the Values tab and fill in a name for the RabbitMQ Cluster. In this lab we will create a rabbitMQ Cluster with the name rabbit1.

4. Scroll down and optionally edit the cluster parameters.

5. Configure Queues and Policies for the rabbitMQ Cluster with 2 queues and 2 policies:

   YAML

   queues:
     - name: my-quorum-queue1
       spec:
         durable: true
         arguments:
           x-queue-type: quorum
     - name: my-quorum-queue2
       spec:
         arguments:
           autoDelete: true
   
   policies:
     - name: my-policy1
       pattern: ".*"
       definition:
         dead-letter-exchange: cc
         ha-mode: all
       spec:
         applyTo: classic_queues
         priority: 1
         vhost: "/"
     - name: my-policy2
       pattern: ".*"
       definition:
         dead-letter-exchange: cc
         max-age: 1h
       spec:
         applyTo: quorum_queues
   

   📘

   Remember that even though these values can be edited afterwards, not all specifications or definitions can be updated after a queue or policy has been created. Please make sure everything is filled in correctly.

6. Click Submit.

Accessing the RabbitMQ Management UI

To access the RabbitMQ Management UI you have two options:

• Retrieve the default user credentials and port-forward the rabbitMQ server

• Create a service to expose the rabbitMQ server and access the Management UI publicly. This is not recommended for production services

In this lab we are going to use port-forwarding.

📘

In this example the rabbitMQ cluster was created in the Team labs, so we have to get the secret from the team-labs namespace. Please retrieve the secret from the namespace where the rabbitMQ cluster was created.

1. Use the following command to retrieve the username:

   Bash

   kubectl get secret rabbit1-quickstart-rabbitmq-default-user -n team-labs -o jsonpath="{.data.username}" | base64 --decode
   

2. Use the following command to retrieve the password:

   Bash

   kubectl get secret rabbit1-quickstart-rabbitmq-default-user -n team-labs -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 --decode
   

   📘

   Make sure you don't copy the % symbol at the end.

   Now you have to port-forward the rabbitmq container with port number 15672 that is inside the rabbitmq pod called rabbit1-rabbitmq-server-0 to a port of your choice that is not used. In this lab we use port 56027.

   📘

   rabbit1-rabbitmq-server-0 has the prefix rabbit1 because this is the name that we gave the cluster.

3. Use the following command to enable the port-forwarding:

   Bash

   kubectl port-forward -n team-labs rabbit1-rabbitmq-server-0 56027:15672
   

4. Open a browser and go to http://localhost:56027

5. Use the previously acquired user credentials to log in. If you cannot log in, please check if the credentials are for the correct rabbitMQ cluster.

   

Checking the RabbitMQ Management UI

Now that we are logged in you should see the following:

We can also check the queues that we specified when creating the rabbitmq cluster in the Queues and Streams tab.

To see the policies that we defined you can see them in the Admin tab and under Policies:

Connecting an Application to the rabbitMQ Cluster

To connect to the rabbitMQ cluster you use AMQP to open a connection. To open a connection you need to create a connection string using the username, password, host and port of the rabbitmq cluster.

1. Get the host using the following command:

   Bash

   kubectl get secret rabbit1-rabbitmq-cluster-default-user -n team-labs -o jsonpath="{.data.host}" | base64 --decode
   

2. Get the port use the following command:

   Bash

   kubectl get secret rabbit1-rabbitmq-cluster-default-user -n team-labs -o jsonpath="{.data.port}" | base64 --decode
   

The connection string is build like this:

amqp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/

With values:

amqp://default_user_mWPUECo5wsbtpgY3oze:MdzUL4CcgF-cQryLfk5uxqf57qqWBG8l@matthew-rabbit1-rabbitmq.team-admin.svc:5672/