External Message Queue Service (RabbitMQ) for Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool

Applies to: Tableau Advanced Management

The Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool uses RabbitMQ as its message queue service to collect data from Agents and bring them to the RMT Server. This information in the queue is processed and eventually stored in the RMT repository (PostgreSQL database).

Before the 2022.3 release, the RabbitMQ message queue service was automatically installed with the RMT Server and this was the only configuration available. Starting in RMT version 2022.3, you can reconfigure RMT Server to use an externally hosted RabbitMQ service. When RMT Server is configured to use an externally hosted message queue service, we refer to it as the external message queue service.

With this new option added in version 2022.3, RMT Server can be configured in the following ways:

  • Continue to use the locally installed message queue service: This means that RabbitMQ that is automatically installed with RMT Server on the same machine will be used as the message service for RMT Server, and no further changes are made to this configuration.
  • Configure RMT Server to use an external message queue service: This means that RAbbitMQ that RMT uses is hosted external to RMT Server. Currently only AWS AMQ is supported as the hosting platform for RabbitMQ. Since all messages from the Agents go through RabbitMQ, by hosting this externally frees up resources from the machine where RMT Server is installed.

To setup and manage the external message queue service, you should have a good understanding of the AWS AMQ platform. We recommend reviewing the documentation on AWS site. You will also need to know how to configure and manage the external message queue service for RMT. This topic will provide you with that information in the sections below.

New installation of Resource Monitoring Tool

The instructions provided in this section apply to a new installation of Resource Monitoring Tool. If you have an existing installation, and want to move your local RabbitMQ to an externally hosted configuration, see the Existing installations of Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool section of this topic.

Use the following steps to install Tableau Resource monitoring tool and reconfigure RMT Server to use an external message queue service:

  1. Create Amazon AMQ for Rabbit MQ to host the external message queue service with the following recommendations:

    • For engine type, use RabbitMQ engine. For the version of Rabbit MQ, see the Product compatibility section.

    • Use the same default version as the one used when RabbitMQ is installed locally. For more information, see the product compatibility table.

    • Use a single-Instance broker.

    • Instance specification: mq.m5.large, 2 vCPU/8 GiB RAM.

    • Create a RabbitMQ username/password.

    To learn more, see Working with Amazon MQ for Rabbit MQ on AWS documentation site.

  2. Test the connection from RMT Server to the message broker by copying the RabbitMQ web console URL from the AWS MQ page, and paste it into a web browser on RMT Server. Log in via the username and password you created when you set up the broker.

  3. Follow the instructions in this topic to install RMT Server, but skip the steps for creating an environment. You will do that later after configuring RMT Server to use the external repository.

  4. Run rmtadmin setup as follows to configure the external Rabbit MQ message queue service:

    rmtadmin master-setup --mq-config=external --mq-server=aws_amq_servername --mq-vhost='/' --mq-port=5671 --mq-username=aws_amq_username --mq-password='aws_amq_password' --mq-tls-certificate-host=aws_amq_servername

  5. Now create an environment and download the bootstrap file.

    • Run the following command to create and environment: rmtadmin create-env --name=<myenvironment> --api-username=<TableauServer API user name> --api-password=<password for the Tableau Server API user account>

    • Download the bootstrap file to register Agents: rmtadmin bootstrap-file --env=<myenvironment> --filename<The absolute or relative path including the file name>

      The steps are described in full detail in the Install the RMT Server Using Command Line topic.

  6. Re-register Agents on Tableau Server Nodes using the instructions in Install the Agent Using Command Line topic.

Existing installations of Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool

In this release, to configure external messaging service, you will essentially have to start with a new installation of Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool using the steps described in the above section.

Upgrade best practices

Here are the general steps you need to follow if you want to upgrade to a version 2022.3 or later and migrate to using an external message queue service at the same time.

Migration with environment recreation:

  1. Upgrade RMT Server and all Agents to 2022.3 or later
  2. Create an Amazon AMQ broker service.
  3. Configure RMT Server to use the external message queue service
  4. Recreate environments and re-register all the Agents
  5. Recreate any custom configurations.

Note: You will lose some event and hardware processing data and you will also need to reconfigure the incident thresholds

Upgrade steps with enabling TLS for RabbitMQ

Since the agents in versions earlier than 2022.3 have been communicating using unencrypted connection to the RabbitMQ message queue service, when upgrading to version 2022.3 or later, those agents need to be updated to use the new secure connection details. The steps to do this are as follows:

  1. After completing the upgrade steps described in the above section, stop all agents by running the following command:

    rmtadmin stop --agent

  2. Download the bootstrap file for the environment by running the following command:

    rmtadmin bootstrap-file --env<myenvironment> --filename <The absolute or relative path including the file name>

  3. Run the following command on each of the machines where the Agent is installed:

    rmtadmin rotate-mq-certificate <BOOTSTRAP_FILE> --username=<RMT Server Username> --password-file=<RMT Server Password file name>

  4. Restart each Agent machine after successfully running the rmtadmin rotate-mq-certificate command.

Product Compatibility

This table lists RMT version 2022.3 and later only, since the external message queue is only available from version 2022.3 and later.

RMT Version RabbitMQ version shipped with RMT Supoort RabbitMQ version for external message queue service
22.3 3.10.5 3.10.5

Who can do this

To install Resource Monitoring Tool, you must have all the following:

  • User account with full sudo access.
  • Tableau Server Administrator site role.
  • Resource Monitoring Tool Administrator account.
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