Clarification Needed: Where Are RabbitMQ Delayed Messages Stored Before Delivery?

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Baskar santhanam

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May 26, 2025, 1:21:30 AM5/26/25
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Hi Team,
We're using the x-delayed-message plugin in RabbitMQ and publishing messages with a delay using the x-delay header. I want to understand the internals — where are these delayed messages held before they are routed to the queues?

Thanks in advance !!!

Regards,
Baskar

Michal Kuratczyk

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May 27, 2025, 5:25:38 AM5/27/25
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It's covered in the Limitations section of the README:
https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-delayed-message-exchange?tab=readme-ov-file#limitations

The TL;DR is: delayed messages are stored in Mnesia, a database built-in into Erlang/OTP (same database
that's used for RabbitMQ metadata, until Khepri is enabled, see https://www.rabbitmq.com/docs/metadata-store for more details).
The fact that Mnesia is used for storage is at the source of many of the plugin's limitations, which is why we are
working on a completely new implementation, that will use a different storage backend and will be free of those limitations.
It'll be a commercial extension however.

Best,


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RabbitMQ Team

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