This is a list of our most frequently asked questions. For more information about CloudAMQP, or if you need any support, please visit our support page.
Please note that if you use our service via a marketplace, the answers to some of these s might not be applicable.
CloudAMQP offer managed RabbitMQ and LavinMQ servers in the cloud. LavinMQ is an open source, high throughput message queuing server.
CloudAMQP has several monitoring tools that help clients address performance issues automatically and promptly. Alarms can also notify clients when resource consumption crosses critical thresholds.
LavinMQ is a high-performance message queuing software built by experienced message queuing developers, many of them from CloudAMQP. It’s built to be fast and more approachable than existing options.
LavinMQ comes with low RAM requirements, and the ability to handle extremely long queues and many connections. AvalancheMQ is also built to include popular characteristics from other message brokers. It combines the best from RabbitMQ and Kafka, ease of use of AMQP with freedom of re-consuming messages like in Kafka by offering a persistent exchange with replay/rewindable queues.
Messages can be sent across languages, platforms, and OS, which decouples your processes from each other and creates a highly scalable system. LavinMQ implements the AMQP protocol. All AMQP client libraries work with CloudAMQP and there are AMQP client libraries for almost every platform on the market, including Ruby, Node.js, Java, Python, Clojure, and Erlang.
A beginner’s guide to LavinMQ can be found in our blog: Guide: LavinMQ for beginners. What is LavinMQ?
A message is the data transported between the publisher and the consumer; essentially a message is a byte array with some headers on top.
A message broker enables independent, unrelated applications to exchange information asynchronously. Message queues store packets of information created by other applications for yet another set of applications to consume. In doing so, a message queue prevents data loss and enables efficient, continuous system function even in the case of a network or another failure.
A beginner’s guide about message queuing can be found in our blog: What is message queuing?
LavinMQ is a message queuing server, also known as a message broker. A message broker’s purpose is to handle incoming messages from applications. The message broker routes the messages within the broker to one or many destinations and stores them in a queue until they are consumed by a consumer.
LavinMQ implements an extension of the open standard AMQP 0.9.1 specification. It is the protocol used as the basis for a set of standards controlling the entire message passing process. As with other message queuing protocols, the defining features of AMQP are message orientation and queuing. Routing is another feature and is basically the process by which an exchange decides which queues to place your message on. Messages in LavinMQ are routed from the exchange to the queue depending on exchange types and keys. Reliability and security are other important features of AMQP.
All AMQP client libraries work with LavinMQ and there are AMQP client libraries for almost every platform out there, including Ruby, Node.js, Java, Python, Crystal, and Clojure.
More information about AMQP can be found here: AMQP the Protocol.
A connection is a TCP connection between your application and the LavinMQ server.
More information about connections and channels in LavinMQ can be founs here: AMQP connections and channels.
A channel is a virtual connection inside a (TCP) connection. A channel is used to send AMQP commands to the broker. Publishing or consuming messages or subscribing to a queue are all done over a channel.
Imagine that you have a web service that receives many requests every second, where no request should get lost and all request processing is time-consuming. Further, imagine that your web service always has to be highly available and ready to receive a new request instead of being locked by the processing of previously received requests.
In this case, placing a queue between the web service and the processing service is the best way to achieve a successful outcome. The two processes will be decoupled and do not need to wait for each other. If you have a lot of requests coming in a short amount of time, the processing system will be able to process them all. The queue will persist requests if their number becomes really huge.
You can then imagine that your business and your workload is growing and you need to scale up your system. All that is needed to be done now is to add more workers to work off the queues faster.
In addition to providing a buffer between a web service and another processing service, message queues can be used for more advanced scenarios. LavinMQ can be configured to route and distribute messages according to different rules and different processes. Messages can be added to different queues depending on how the messages should be handled. The processing systems can then process them at their leisure.
Use LavinMQ when you want a fast and easy-to-set-up message broker with routing options. Use LavinMQ when you need support for long queues and many connections.
Read more in the blog Five reasons to consider LavinMQ when choosing message broker.
A message queue will keep the processes in your application separated and independent of each other. The first process will never need to invoke another process, post notifications to another process, or follow the process flow of the other processes. It can just put the message in the queue and then continue processing. The other processes can also handle their work independently. They can take the messages from the queue when they are able to process them.
This way of handling messages creates a system that is easy to maintain and easy to scale.
Instead of building a massive application, decoupling different concerns in your application and sending messages between them asynchronously is more streamlined. That way different parts of your application can evolve independently, be written in different languages and/or be maintained by separated developer teams.
Messages can be stored-and-forwarded or redelivered until the message is processed.
Instead of polling your data store, a message is published when new data is inserted. Interested parties will be notified immediately and your data store will be ready to answer qualified queries instead.
Message queueing is the key to making your application scale. As the workload goes up you only have to add more workers to work off the queues faster.
Message queues decouple your processes. If a process that is processing messages from the queue fails, other messages can still be added to the queue and be processed when the system has recovered.
Message queues enable asynchronous processing, meaning that it allows you to put a message in a queue without processing it immediately.
CloudAMQP is an excellent backend for real-time applications. Notifications and message streaming is handled very effectively by LavinMQ, which is able to push thousands of messages per second.
Cloud-based messaging increases the speed of getting the application to the market. Developers can focus on the core part of their applications instead of managing and maintaining servers and queueing infrastructure.
Developers who want to focus on the core part of their applications, instead of managing and maintaining servers and queueing infrastructure, are using CloudAMQP.
We have customers in a range from large enterprise businesses and startups to individual hobby developers.
You can delete an instance from the instances list page. If you remove an instance, your queues, exchanges and bindings will be deleted and we will not be able to restore them.
Queue alarms can be triggered to send notification emails to you and your co-workers when the number of messages in a queue reaches a certain threshold for a set amount of time.
Consumers Alarms can be triggered to send notification emails to you and your co-workers when a number of consumers for a queue is less than or equal to a set number of consumers, for a set amount of time.
(Only for dedicated instances) When the CPU alarm is enabled will you receive a notification email when you are using more than 80% of the available CPU for more than 15 minutes. You can change the level at which the alarm will trigger. It is recommended to enable CPU alarms, which is done through the Control Panel.
(Only for dedicated instances) When the Memory alarm is enabled you will receive a notification email when you are using more than 90% of the available memory for more than 15 minutes. The level can be changed. It is recommended to enable Memory alarms, which is done through the Control Panel. Note: This alarm is calculated from how much memory the underlying virtual machine is using, not what LavinMQ is using.
Virtual Hosts (vhosts) make it possible to separate applications on one broker. You can isolate users, exchanges, queues, etc. to one specific vhost. You can separate environments, e.g. production to one vhost and staging to another vhost, within the same broker instead of setting up multiple brokers.
vhosts can be added to all dedicated instances. The downside of using a single instance is that there's no resource isolation between virtual hosts.
Your LavinMQ instance goes under the same SLA we offer for RabbitMQ. See CloudAMQP Service Level Agreement (SLA).
See our Getting Started Guide. Our popular blog post Guide: LavinMQ for beginners. What is LavinMQ? is also a good place to start. Once you have created your account you can start queuing and processing by using any of the guides available here in the docs, depending on platform and language. These tutorials cover the basics of creating messaging applications using CloudAMQP.
No, you cannot access the nodes via SSH. Let us know if you need to perform any actions on the server and we will help you.
No, lavinmqctl is only possible to run on the local machine.
There are no limitations in the number of channels per connection on our dedicated plans. We limit all shared plans to 200 channels per connection.
LavinMQ provides two types of federation: exchange and queue federation. A federated exchange can route messages published to an upstream server to a local queue. A federated queue allows a local consumer to receive messages from an upstream queue.
Lemming instances that are abandoned/not used during the latest two months will be deleted. This will only happen if you haven’t published or subscribed one single message during that time.
You will receive a warning email before the instance is deleted, from where you have the option wake up the instance.
We do support TLS (SSL). In most clients it is easy to use TLS, just replace amqp:// with amqps:// in the URL. To force TLS for all clients, use the firewall to close the AMQP port (keep AMQPS).
All servers are configured with server certificates signed by a CA found in your default trust store.
More details are found here: https://lavinmq.com/documentation/amqps-tls
Note: TLS will only secure messages during the transport. What we recommend for highly sensitive information (HIPAA, PCI etc) is that you encrypt your message bodies on your side and that you have a shared key between your publishers and your consumers.
We normally recommend using TLS with a server-side cert for encryption and then username/password authentication. It is possible to use client certificates, but it's not that easy to maintain a CA in terms of proper certificate generation, etc. We normally advise against it as the security benefits are questionable.
If you want to use client certificates we can help you install the public part of the CA on the server and enable peer verification, but you have to manage the certificate generation yourself.
All servers are using certificates issued by Let's Encrypt. Most operating systems and browsers comes with the Let's Encrypt root certificates built-in, read more at letsencrypt.org/certificates.
The root certificate CloudAMQP servers are using is ISRG Root X1. If you need, you can download it directly from https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem or crt.sh.
Your server certificate is renewed seamlessly approximately every two months.
AMQP's messages are just byte arrays, you can send anything, encrypted or not.
One message is counted as consumed when a message is published from your service to LavinMQ or when one message is consumed from LavinMQ.
If it feels like you are publishing/consuming fewer messages then specified in your CloudAMQP console.
The reset is performed the first day every month.
You will get warnings via email when you have used 70 and 100 percent of your allowed usage. With max connections you will be unable to establish new connections, existing connections are not affected.
It is only possible to manage users, virtual hosts and permissions on dedicated plans. A dedicated plan is Big Bunny or any plan larger than Big Bunny.
You are allowed a maxiumum of 49 free instances. If you need more instances, please upgrade to one of our paid plans.
Yes, everything is included in the price. There is no extra cost or payment required for data traffic or to other platforms.
Billing occurs at the end of each month, and you are only charged for the time an instance has been available to you. As soon as you delete the instance you won't be charged for it anymore, i.e. if you had a Big Bunny (for $99/month) running for 15 days, then you will only be charged $49.50.
You also have the option to prepay an amount that suits your needs. If you'd like to avoid lots of small transactions, then prepayment is for you. A prepayment can be made for one to several months in advance*.
A customer subscribing to our plan Big Bunny equalling $99/month can choose to make a prepayment of $99*12 (and then skip being charged on a monthly basis for one whole year). The prepayment covers all plans the customer has on his/her account. So let's say that the customer in the example would add another Big Bunny plan to his/her account on month five, then the prepayment will cover both plans for three more months. After that, the customer's prepayment will have been fully spent.
You can pay with VISA, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, JCB, Diners Club or Invoice/transfer. Contact us at billing@cloudamqp.com if you require invoicing. Payment options can be found under Billing information in the Control Panel. Please note that we don’t accept checks.
No discounts are available at this time.
No. There is no shipping cost since the service is shipped electronically.
No. The service is non-returnable.
You can choose to pay through credit card (due on charge date) or via wire transfers (NET15). If you would like us to enable manual invoicing via wire transfer - send us an email once you have added all information and we will enable it for you. Please note that we don’t accept checks.
Email sales@cloudamqp.com to receive an official quote. Include what plan you want, if the quote should include VPC or not, and the subscription period.
The service will be provided off-premise in a data center and region chosen on behalf of the customer. The data centers and regions currently provided can be found at CloudAMQP Plans & Pricing page.
Our billing is pro-rated, which means that our customers only pay for the time the service has been available to them and that the payment is done the month after delivery. Thus, you won’t receive your first invoice when the account has been created, you will receive it at the beginning of the upcoming month.
No. Our customers often change their plan while they are using our service, therefore it’s not convenient to pay for a year upfront. However, we do allow prepayments with credit. If you are a paying customer contact our customer support to activate prepayment. For more information, see Prepayments on CloudAMQP.
No. We don’t need any documents with signatures from you.
No. To safeguard customer data, active subscriptions aren’t deleted. For example, resellers that provide us with a PO for two months’ of the Happy Hippo plan are responsible for deleting the plan after the subscription expires. Otherwise, you will be charged for the extra time your data remains on the system.
It’s best to extend the current PO. If you need to have two separate PO’s for the subscriptions, you need to open a new account in order to make the subscriptions be billed separately.
Go to https://customer.cloudamqp.com/login and enter your email address. Fill out all the information in the billing section, such as billing address, email, etc. Please note that it’s important that we have your billing information registered and not the end-user information since you are our direct customer and not the end-user.
The PO number can be specified in the billing section under “billing notes”. Or send it to us, and we will add it for you.
You are free to create and delete instances once the billing information is set up. It’s up to you and the end-customer to decide who of you that will create the subscription specified in the PO.
Invite the end-customer to the account via https://customer.cloudamqp.com/team so that he/she can start using the service.
Change the role of the person that created your account to “Billing Manager”. By doing so, you can access all invoices of the account and update the billing information. But you will not be able to edit the customer's subscription. For more information, see: Manage instance access with Access Control List (ACL).
Yes. See CloudAMQP and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
No separate agreement is required. Our Data Processing Agreement (DPA) for GDPR is an exhibit to our Terms of Service. Thus, our business relationship is automatically covered by a DPA when signing up for an account.
You have the right to see what personal information 84codes AB holds about you. You are entitled to be given a description of the information, what we use it for, who we might pass it onto, and any information we might have about the source of the information.
A subject access requests should be made via email to compliance@84codes.com
As the data controller, you decide where you want to host your data by choosing the data center and region. The data will not leave that region unless you choose to move it. In CloudAMQP ’s role as data controller, we may collect and store contact information, such as email address, and physical address, when customers sign up for our services or seek support help.
Your personal customer data (email and billing information) is stored in the US.
We are proud to be compliant with SOC 2 by AICPA. We have been audited against the Security (common criteria) and Availability Trust Services Criteria.
Our SOC 2 Type 2 report can be obtained under an NDA per request. Please send an email to compliance@cloudamqp.com.