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Amazon MQ

Amazon MQ replication with Arpio

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Supported Resources

Replication Set Up 

Recovery Behavior

Post-Recovery (Conclude) Behavior

Multi-Application Behavior

Limitations

What Gets Protected (Supported Resources)

Arpio discovers and protects the following Amazon MQ resources:

  • ActiveMQ brokers (single-instance and active/standby multi-AZ)
  • RabbitMQ brokers (single-instance and cluster multi-AZ)
  • MQ configurations (each broker's current configuration revision, including auto-generated configurations that AWS creates for RabbitMQ brokers)

Arpio also discovers the infrastructure each broker depends on:

  • VPC, subnets, and security groups
  • KMS encryption keys (when using customer-managed keys)

Setting Up Replication for MQ with Arpio

User Passwords

Arpio cannot read broker user passwords from the source environment. Before the first recovery, customers must create a Secrets Manager secret in the recovery environment containing a JSON mapping of usernames to passwords. The AWS Console calls this an "other type of secret" and the keys will be the user names and the values the passwords. For example:

{"admin": "mypassword", "appuser": "apppassword"}

The secret name follows the pattern: /Arpio/MqBroker/<broker name>/UserPasswords

This secret should be kept in sync with the users and passwords configured on the broker in the primary environment.

Encryption

If a broker uses a customer-managed KMS key for encryption at rest, that key must be included in the same Arpio application (or another application in the same Arpioaccount).

Arpio will automatically discover the key dependency and ensure it exists in the recovery environment before creating the broker.

Brokers using AWS-owned keys require no additional configuration.

Recovery Behavior

During Standby (Normal Operations)

  • Configurations are created and kept up to date in the recovery environment. This includes the XML configuration data and tags.
  • Brokers are NOT created during standby. This avoids incurring costs for running brokers that aren't needed until failover.
  • If a previous failover test left brokers in the recovery environment, they are deleted during the next standby restore.

During Failover or Failover Test

Arpio creates brokers in the recovery environment matching the source configuration:

  • Same engine type and version (major.minor)
  • Same deployment mode and instance type
  • Same subnet and security group placement (translated to recovery environment)
  • Same configuration data
  • Same encryption settings
  • Users are created with passwords from the Secrets Manager secret

Broker creation typically takes 10-30 minutes depending on the engine type and deployment mode. Arpio waits for the broker to reach the RUNNING state before reporting success.

DNS Translation

Arpio tracks broker endpoint hostnames (protocol endpoints and web console URLs) so that related DNS records (e.g., Route 53 CNAME records pointing to a broker) are automatically updated to point to the recovery broker's endpoints.

For multi-AZ brokers, all instance endpoints are tracked.

After Recovery (Conclude)

When a customer concludes a test or recovery (returns to standby):

  • Brokers in the recovery environment are deleted
  • Configurations are retained for future use
  • The user password secret remains in the recovery environment

Multi-Application Behavior

When multiple Arpio applications protect brokers that share the same MQ configuration, each application tracks its own configuration revision independently.

If one application is deleted while another still references the same configuration:

  • The configuration is retained for the remaining application
  • Only the deleted application's broker is cleaned up
  • Shared infrastructure (VPC, subnets, security groups) remains as long as any application needs it

Limitations

  • User passwords must be manually managed in the recovery environment
  • Message data is not replicated — only broker configuration is protected
  • LDAP server references are retained as-is during translation (external LDAP servers are not managed by Arpio)
  • Data replication broker references (DataReplicationPrimaryBrokerArn) are passed through but not actively managed
  • Engine version is truncated to major.minor during broker creation — the exact patch version in the recovery environment may differ from the source