Tanzu RabbitMQ continues to be the messaging broker of choice for enterprises and developers looking for a lightweight, scalable, and reliable solution for data messaging and streaming. With its proven track record of performance, flexibility, and an active open source community, Tanzu RabbitMQ remains a cornerstone of modern distributed systems, microservices architectures, and event-driven applications. This latest point release of Tanzu RabbitMQ, built from the OSS RabbitMQ, includes critical enhancements, optimizations, and fixes that improve overall efficiency, security, and ease of use.
Each Tanzu RabbitMQ release builds upon an already powerful platform, and this point release is no exception. The latest update brings iterations on the recently released version 4.0 with support for native AMQP 1.0. This makes Tanzu RabbitMQ even more interoperable than before with the inclusion of a Java Message Service queue feature that further broadens the appeal for users to migrate other legacy message brokers on to a solution that is actively being developed as well as offering long term support.
Security and operational simplicity continues to be a priority for the RabbitMQ team, enabling developers and administrators to gain deeper insights into messaging patterns, system performance, security posture, and potential bottlenecks. So with this release we’re introducing enhanced authentication and authorization mechanisms, patches for potential vulnerabilities, and enhancements to monitoring and observability features. Meanwhile, new CLI improvements provide more control and visibility into message flows, making troubleshooting, optimization and migration easier than ever.
Improved Performance for Quorum Queues
The default durable queue type for Tanzu RabbitMQ is Quorum Queues, these robust cluster friendly message queues get a performance boost in the 4.1. Memory utilization has been tuned so that there is now an improved balance between memory and disk usage. The net result is that throughput is almost doubled and the publish latency nearly halved for messages less than 500Bs in size. Obviously there is a trade off between message size and publish rate, but for many this enhancement will be very noticeable.
Read more here.
A new Package for Tanzu RabbitMQ
For some time now the open source version of RabbitMQ has been available as an RPM package and we have extended this to Tanzu RabbitMQ so users can more easily access all its unique features. This new package does not replace the ever popular OVA. For some users though, in-place upgrades with OVA images can be challenging. This is no longer the case with the new RPM.
Iterations on native AMQP 1.0
We launched native support for the more widely used Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP) 1.0 in the previous version of Tanzu RabbitMQ 4.0. The RabbitMQ team continues to add features to better support this protocol with the aim of making it easier to integrate into existing legacy workflows while also providing greater resilience, performance and scalability. In OSS RabbitMQ 3.13 we introduced bloom filters for streams. Filtering messages from a data stream can lighten the load on client applications, making them simpler and lighter weight. This new AMQP 1.0 specific feature provides a more finite approach to the filtering arguments. Filters can be set based on message properties (message-id, type, subject, creation-time, group-id etc.), as well as the message application properties (part of the bare message). This feature returns either ‘true’ or ‘false’ based on the defined expression. When ‘true’ is returned, messages are dispatched to the intended consumer.
This latest release also introduces websockets for AMQP 1.0. RabbitMQ already supports other protocols like MQTT and STOMP, adding AMPQP 1.0 to the list allows for enterprise-wide standardization. This less opinionated approach to client development allows for better decoupling between publisher and consumer applications. Better decoupling means greater flexibility in development and deployment.
New JMS Queue Feature
For a long time, RabbitMQ has supported the Java Message Service (JMS) which is a popular choice for web app development. Now that RabbitMQ has improved support for AMQP 1.0, the closer alignment between JMS and AMQP 1.0 allows for more JMS features added to future releases of RabbitMQ. For example, this latest release features support for JMS temporary queues, which is pretty much the same as AMQP 1.0 dynamic queues. These are based on exclusive classic queues in RabbitMQ and have the advantage of only existing for as long as a session connection lasts. This simplifies broker admin and prevents message queue clutter and unnecessary resource usage and makes it easier for users of legacy message brokers to update to a more recent solution that can better scale to their business needs.
Improvements to WSR
The popular and distinct Warm Standby Replication feature in Tanzu RabbitMQ, gets some new features in this release. It is now possible to pause and resume the schema synchronisation process between the upstream and downstream RabbitMQ clusters. This makes it easier for users to automate the process of copying messaging schemas outside of the full bundle of WSR. The benefit of this is that users can build their own failover replication topologies if they want. This is particularly relevant for Kubernetes customers, because of the additional complexities that Kubernetes creates.
Enhanced Observability
Also available in the open source version but worth mentioning here are some updates to the Prometheus and Grafana dashboards. For a long time, this has been the recommended approach to monitoring RabbitMQ deployments. In this update it is now possible to view the message throughput on a per queue type basis. This can be helpful when planning and monitoring migrations.
Loved by developers trusted by enterprise!
Tanzu RabbitMQ provides robust support for multiple messaging protocols, including AMQP, MQTT, and STOMP. Its flexible routing capabilities, high availability through clustering, Warm Standby Replication, and support for multi-tenancy make it a preferred solution for enterprises managing large-scale distributed systems. With built-in support for message acknowledgments, durable queues, and various exchange types, Tanzu RabbitMQ ensures reliable and ordered message delivery even in high-throughput environments.
With this latest point release, Tanzu RabbitMQ reaffirms its position as a leader in the messaging ecosystem. Its continued focus on performance, security, and operational efficiency makes it the go-to choice for businesses seeking a scalable and dependable messaging solution. As always, the RabbitMQ community remains committed to innovation and excellence, ensuring that RabbitMQ remains the best-in-class message broker for years to come.
Check out the webinar below for more details about what’s new with RabbitMQ!
More Resources:
Banking on VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ for Robust Messaging
Webinar on ‘What’s new in VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ 4.1
Introducing VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ 4.0 – Built for Resilience and Performance
Messaging and Streaming in the Times of AI – Threat or Opportunity?
