AMQP Virtual Hosts (vhosts)
Virtual hosts (vhosts) provide logical isolation within a single LavinMQ instance. Each vhost has its own set of exchanges, queues, bindings, permissions, policies, and parameters, and clients are scoped to one vhost per connection.
Default Vhost
LavinMQ creates a default vhost named / on first start. The default user (guest) is granted full permissions on /. The default vhost can be deleted; nothing in the server depends on it existing.
Isolation
Resources in different vhosts are completely independent:
- Exchanges and queues in one vhost are invisible to other vhosts
- Bindings only connect resources within the same vhost — there is no cross-vhost binding. To move messages between vhosts use a shovel or federation.
- Policies and parameters are scoped to a vhost
- Users must be granted permissions per vhost
A client connection is bound to a single vhost. AMQP clients select the vhost in connection.open; MQTT clients can encode it in the username as vhost:username (otherwise default_vhost is used).
Vhost Limits
Vhost limits cap resource consumption per vhost. They are stored as part of the vhost definition and managed via the API or CLI.
| Limit | Description |
|---|---|
max-connections |
Maximum concurrent connections to this vhost. New connections beyond the cap are refused with connection.close reply code 530 (NOT_ALLOWED). Existing connections are unaffected if the limit is later lowered below the current count. |
max-queues |
Maximum number of queues in this vhost. queue.declare fails when the cap is reached. Existing queues are unaffected if the limit is later lowered below the current count. |
Limits are optional. When not set, there is no cap. Setting a limit to a negative value removes it.
Limits are managed via PUT /api/vhost-limits/:vhost/:type (where :type is max-connections or max-queues) or the lavinmqctl set_vhost_limits command.
Management
Vhosts can be managed via the HTTP API (/api/vhosts), the CLI (lavinmqctl add_vhost / delete_vhost / list_vhosts), or the management UI.
Deleting a vhost closes all its connections, removes all its resources (exchanges, queues, bindings, policies, parameters), removes all user permissions for that vhost, and recursively deletes the vhost’s data directory from disk.
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Help and feedback
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