How to Migrate from CloudMQTT to HiveMQ Cloud
CloudMQTT offers managed Mosquitto servers in the cloud, with various MQTT plans for both hobbyists and small-scale production deployments.
Given the imminent closure of CloudMQTT, users need an actionable migration plan that will allow them to still reap the full benefits of MQTT with a managed solution. Though CloudMQTT offers CloudAMQP as a viable alternative, we don’t recommend that for customers who are accustomed to using MQTT. Here’s why.
MQTT is designed for IoT whereas AMQP is not. The latter is a general-purpose message queuing protocol that is more complex than MQTT and has a greater overhead for IoT. A while back we published this blog post comparing both protocols in detail for IoT use cases.
HiveMQ Cloud offers users flexible plans that allow them to migrate easily and grow with you and your use cases. This guide highlights HiveMQ Cloud’s rich features and flexible plans, aiming to provide CloudMQTT users with a seamless transition path and assurance for their future IoT messaging needs.
Understanding HiveMQ Cloud's Offerings
HiveMQ Cloud is a fully-managed, cloud-native IoT messaging platform that stands out for its scalability, security, and ease of integration. It supports unlimited connections on any paid plan, ensuring that your IoT applications can grow without worrying about the number of device connections.
HiveMQ Cloud is fully compliant with MQTT 3.1, MQTT 3.1.1, and MQTT 5 specifications, providing flexibility and future-proofing your IoT solutions. Security is a cornerstone, with SOC 2 Type 1 and ISO/IEC 27001 compliance, alongside end-to-end TLS encryption and various device authentication methods. You can learn more about HiveMQ Cloud on the product’s webpage and documentation.
Migration Plan Overview
To easily migrate your IoT deployments from CloudMQTT to HiveMQ Cloud, you can follow this simple 8-step migration plan.
Evaluate current usage and needs: Start by assessing your CloudMQTT setup to help you choose the right HiveMQ Cloud plan. CloudMQTT offers 4 plans, with the simplest plan called Humble Hedgehog, which limits users to 25 connections, and the most advanced called Power Pug, which limits users to 10,000 connections.
Choose the right HiveMQ Cloud plan: HiveMQ Cloud offers several plans, including Serverless for experimenting, Starter for small-scale production, Professional for scalable workloads, and Enterprise for sophisticated deployments. Each plan provides various features and support levels to meet varied needs. Based on the CloudMQTT Pricing model, here is a recommendation from our end.
Sign up and configure your HiveMQ Cloud account: Register for HiveMQ Cloud and select the plan that best matches your requirements. Then, create a new cluster in the HiveMQ Cloud Console, which will serve as the central point for your MQTT clients to connect. You can learn how to do that step-by-step in one of our previous posts for Cloud Starter or Cloud Serverless.
Migrate your domain name: With the Starter plan, you can move your CloudMQTT deployment to the HiveMQ Cloud provider without requiring clients to update their settings, which makes the migration easy. You can learn more about this in one of our previous posts on setting up a custom domain name.
Migrate security and authentication settings: Reconfigure your security settings in HiveMQ Cloud, including creating client credentials or certificates/tokens and configuring authorization rules to mirror your CloudMQTT setup. Here are some examples of Cloud Starter or Cloud Serverless.
Update MQTT client configurations: Adjust your MQTT clients to connect to your new HiveMQ Cloud cluster by updating the broker address, port, and authentication details. Ensure all devices and applications are pointed to the new environment. As discussed in Step 4, this step can be a simpler process by migrating your domain name.
Test and validate the migration: Before going live, thoroughly test your setup to ensure all components communicate correctly, and security settings are properly enforced. Use HiveMQ's testing tools like the MQTT CLI and the Web Client for validation. HiveMQ Web Client is similar to CloudMQTT’s Websocket UI and offers more functionality. A step-by-step walkthrough is available in HiveMQ documentation. This tool is available with both Starter and Serverless plans. Additionally, the MQTT CLI is an open-source tool that supports a range of MQTT clients.
Go live and monitor: After validating your deployment using our guide and free trial on HiveMQ Cloud Starter, switch to HiveMQ Cloud for your production environment. Leverage the HiveMQ Control Center to monitor connections, subscriptions, and message flows in real-time.
Grow and Scale After Migration
After successful migration, explore the advanced features provided by HiveMQ Cloud, such as built-in MQTT security, observability via HiveMQ Control Center, and Cloud REST APIs access for enhanced IoT project management and scalability. Additionally, HiveMQ Cloud offers integration with streaming services like Kafka and AWS Kinesis.
Once you are ready to scale, you can choose either a Professional or Enterprise plan to fit your needs. HiveMQ Cloud future-proofs your deployment needs with the right tools to grow and scale your IoT deployments.
We’ve helped customers like Paxton monitor 30,000+ buildings and Air France-KLM support 500+ aircraft and 77 million passengers, all while taking advantage of the fully-managed HiveMQ Cloud MQTT platform that frees up engineers from managing backend systems to focus on building new features and improving the customer experience.
Migration might seem daunting, but with careful planning and leveraging HiveMQ Cloud's extensive documentation and support, you can ensure a smooth transition. With HiveMQ Cloud, you get all the features and functionality that you love with CloudMQTT and a lot more.
Easy to Get Started Today
With its commitment to security, compliance, and scalability, HiveMQ Cloud offers a robust platform for your IoT applications' future growth. Embrace this change as an opportunity to enhance your IoT infrastructure with a platform built to handle the demands of modern IoT ecosystems.
Now that you’re ready to migrate, please sign up for HiveMQ Cloud for free and get started today.
Shashank Sharma
Shashank Sharma is a product marketing manager at HiveMQ. He is passionate about technology, supporting customers, and enabling developer-centric workflows. He focuses on the HiveMQ Cloud offerings and has previous experience in application software tooling, autonomous driving, and numerical computing.
