RabbitMQ broker definition backup restore for Pivotal Platform

Products

• VMware RabbitMQ

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

RabbitMQ for Pivotal Platform has provision to backup cluster broker definition for both the on-demand and pre-provisioned services using the RabbitMQ Management API. Backups include Vhosts, exchanges, queues and users.

However, there are some scenarios which we need to take care.

Environment

Resolution

RabbitMQ for Pivotal Platform stores Vhosts, exchanges, queues, and users in definitions file and service instances as well as keys and bindings on CCDB. In general for example, if all RabbitMQ servers nodes stop working and lose data, you have to redeploy RabbitMQ tile with same deployment manifest files and import backup definition file to restore your cluster.

However in the scenario, if you want to delete a RabbitMQ tile and install, you need to take care of two things:

1. Make sure you turn off the pre-delete errand, as service keys, instances, and bindings are stored in the cloud controller DB. When deleting the tile and executing (delete errand) it got removed from CCDB.

2. After installing and importing backup definitions, you need to update the broker and admin password for RabbitMQ. When you redeployed the tile manifest change and it generated a new broker/admin password which was overwritten when you imported the old credentials.

To update the same you can `ssh` into server node and use `rabbitmqctl change_password user pass` or log into admin UI and update the password as mentioned on the Operations Manager RabbitMQ credential tab dashboard under `Server Admin Credentials`  or `Service Broker Rabbitmq Admin Credentials`.