Production checklist
RabbitMQ production checklist: 6 checks before launch
6 checks for running RabbitMQ in production: 1 must-do, 3 should-dos and 2 good-to-haves. Each one says why it matters, how to verify it and where the docs are.
Updated . Every check links the vendor’s own docs.
Must do (1)
Remove the default guest user and create per-app users
guest/guest is the first thing scanners try.
Verify from the command line
The guest user shouldn’t be listed; each app has its own user.
rabbitmqctl list_users
Should do (3)
Encrypt client connections with TLS
AMQP credentials and messages otherwise travel in plain text.
Verify from the command line
Listeners should include amqp/ssl (usually 5671), and plain AMQP on 5672 shouldn’t be reachable from outside.
rabbitmq-diagnostics listeners
Set the memory high watermark and disk free limit for your hosts
When a node runs out of disk it can’t recover cleanly; the alarms stop publishers first.
Verify from the command line
Status shows the memory high watermark and a disk free limit sized for your host, well above the small default.
rabbitmq-diagnostics status | grep -iE "watermark|disk free"
Use publisher confirms and manual consumer acknowledgements
Without them, messages are lost when a connection drops mid-flight.
Check the code
Publishers use a confirm channel and wait for confirms; consumers ack manually after processing.
const ch = await conn.createConfirmChannel(); await ch.consume(queue, handle, { noAck: false });
Good to have (2)
Go through the RabbitMQ production checklist
Resource limits, TLS and clustering settings for production.
How to verify
Go through each section of the checklist (virtual hosts, users, resource limits, TLS, clustering) and note which apply.
Use quorum queues for messages you can’t lose
They replicate across nodes, so a node failure doesn’t lose the queue.
Verify from the command line
Queues holding important messages show type quorum.
rabbitmqctl list_queues name type durable
Get the checklist for your whole stack
Design your stack or map your repo in StackPrism, and the Improve panel lists the checks for every technology on it and keeps track of what you’ve done. Building with an AI app builder? Start with the vibe coding checklist.