Apache BifroMQ Multi-Tenant MQTT Broker

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Apache BifroMQ - Hardened Multi-Tenant MQTT Broker AMI

Deploy a distributed, high-performance MQTT broker on AWS in minutes - not hours. This AMI delivers Apache BifroMQ preinstalled and running as managed system services, with authentication enforced on every connection out of the box, so an authenticated MQTT endpoint answers the moment the instance boots.

BifroMQ implements MQTT 3.1, 3.1.1 and 5.0 and is built around native multi-tenancy: every connection is resolved to a tenant, and each tenant's topics, subscriptions and sessions are isolated from every other tenant's on the same broker. It suits teams connecting large fleets of devices or sensors to a message backbone, platform operators serving several isolated groups of clients from shared infrastructure, and event-driven or telemetry systems that need an MQTT broker run on their own infrastructure rather than a hosted service.

### Why This AMI Instead of a DIY Install

• Secure by default, not by accident: Left at its upstream defaults BifroMQ loads a development authentication provider that accepts every connection without checking the password and grants every publish and subscribe - a stock deployment is an open broker. This image replaces that with real per-connection credential checking and closes the related failure where a broker whose authentication service is unreachable would silently grant every action instead of denying it.
• No baked credential: A unique MQTT username and a long random password are generated on each instance's first boot and written to a root-only file. No shared or default secret ever ships in the image.
• Tuned and supervised: The Java runtime is sized for the instance rather than left to a default that would exhaust its memory, and the broker plus its authentication service are started, ordered and restarted by systemd.

### Application Stack

• Apache BifroMQ installed under /opt/bifromq, run by a dedicated unprivileged service account
• Headless OpenJDK Java runtime with JVM heaps and direct memory tuned for the instance
• MQTT over TCP on port 1883, authenticated by a loopback policy service via the bundled webhook auth plugin
• Authorization configured to fail CLOSED - pub/sub is denied, never silently granted, if the auth service is unavailable
• Two unauthenticated management ports bound to loopback and additionally enforced there by a persistent firewall rule

### Security

Authentication on Every Connection: The broker validates a salted-hashed credential on every MQTT CONNECT, and denies wrong-password and anonymous connects. A per-instance username and password are generated at first boot.

Fail-Closed Authorization: The image ships with authorization set to fail closed, so a transient outage of the authentication service denies publish and subscribe rather than granting them.

Loopback-Only Management: The admin HTTP API and the plugin metrics endpoint are bound to loopback and enforced there by a persistent iptables rule; reach them over an SSH tunnel.

Network Isolation: The recommended security group opens only SSH. Open the MQTT port (1883, or 8883 for TLS once you supply a certificate) only to the trusted client CIDRs your fleet connects from, ideally within a private VPC subnet.

### Multi-Tenancy

BifroMQ derives a tenant from the authenticated principal, and tenants are strictly isolated - a publisher and subscriber must share a tenant credential to exchange messages. This lets one broker serve many isolated groups of clients without cross-tenant leakage.

### Use Cases

• Connecting large fleets of IoT devices and sensors over MQTT
• Serving several isolated tenants from one shared message broker
• Building event-driven and telemetry pipelines on self-hosted infrastructure

### 24/7 cloudimg Support

Technical support by email and live chat covers broker deployment, authentication and credential management, TLS enablement, JVM and memory tuning, multi-tenant topic design, and troubleshooting connectivity and delivery.

Book a free deployment review with our engineers to plan your production architecture before or after purchase.

This product bundles Apache BifroMQ, which is currently undergoing incubation at the Apache Software Foundation. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.