Dockerize RabbitMQ

You want to run RabbitMQ in a Docker environment? You want MQTT and a nice web interface for administration?

Just use the Dockerfile and the hints in this post to get your server up and running in no time!

# use rabbitmq official
FROM rabbitmq

# enable management plugin
RUN rabbitmq-plugins enable --offline rabbitmq_management

# enable mqtt plugin
RUN rabbitmq-plugins enable --offline rabbitmq_mqtt

# expose management port
EXPOSE 15672

# use rabbitmq official

FROM rabbitmq

# enable management plugin

RUN rabbitmq-plugins enable --offline rabbitmq_management

# enable mqtt plugin

RUN rabbitmq-plugins enable --offline rabbitmq_mqtt

# expose management port

EXPOSE 15672

Beware: There are two very important points to keep in mind! If you miss even one of these steps, you will loose your configuration and users on every restart!

Use a persistent volume

Map the path /var/lib/rabbitmq to a Volume. Either a Docker Volume or a volume mapping to the host will do the trick.

See Docker Guide: volumes for more information about Volumes.

Set a hostname

RabbitMQ will use the hostname as part of its database and configuration files. Docker will set a random hostname on each startup.

So make sure you use the -h <hostname> option when starting the container.

Example

Build the container by putting the above contents into a file called Dockerfile and run the command docker build -t myrabbitmq - < Dockerfile . This will build a container named “myrabbitmq“.

Now as we have the Container in place, we can startup the container executing the following command

1	docker run -it -h rabbitmqhost -p 1883:1883 -p 15672:15672 -v /opt/rabbitmq:/var/lib/rabbitmq myrabbitmq

If everything is correct, the container should be started and you should be able to connect to http://localhost:15672/ with your web browser (User/Password is guest).