I have been trying to create a Docker based RabbitMQ cluster on and off for sometime and got it working today – fairly basic and flaky but could be a good starting point for others to improve on.

This is how the sample cluster looks on my machine, this is a typical cluster described in the RabbitMQ clustering guide available here -https://www.rabbitmq.com/clustering.html. As recommended at the site, there are 2 disk based nodes and 1 RAM based node here.

 
 
 
 
👁 SampleRabbitMQCluster

To quickly replicate this, you only need to have fig in your machine, just create a fig.yml file with the following entry:

rabbit1:
 image: bijukunjummen/rabbitmq-server
 hostname: rabbit1
 ports:
 - "5672:5672"
 - "15672:15672"

rabbit2:
 image: bijukunjummen/rabbitmq-server
 hostname: rabbit2
 links:
 - rabbit1
 environment: 
 - CLUSTERED=true
 - CLUSTER_WITH=rabbit1
 - RAM_NODE=true

rabbit3:
 image: bijukunjummen/rabbitmq-server
 hostname: rabbit3
 links:
 - rabbit1
 - rabbit2
 environment: 
 - CLUSTERED=true
 - CLUSTER_WITH=rabbit1

and in the folder holding this file, run:

fig up

That is it!, the entire cluster should come up. If you need more nodes, just modify the fig.yml file.

The docker files for creating the dockerized rabbitmq-server is available at my github repo here: https://github.com/bijukunjummen/docker-rabbitmq-cluster and the “rabbitmq-server” image itself is here at the docker hub.

References

• The base rabbitmq image is somewhat based on cthulhuology’s docker rabbitmq image: https://github.com/cthulhuology/docker-rabbitmq
• Docker file: https://github.com/bijukunjummen/docker-rabbitmq-cluster
• Docker image: https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/bijukunjummen/rabbitmq-server/