RabbitMQ tools: rabbitmqctl vs rabbitmqadmin

Question

I'm new to RabbitMQ and I decided to start with console tools for better management understanding. Then I'm going to use web console and then Java client.

I faced some operations can be executed both with rabbitmqctl :

rabbitmqctl add_vhost test_vhost

and with rabbitmqadmin :

rabbitmqadmin declare vhost name="test_vhost"

But I did not succeed in, for instance, creating new exchange with rabbitmqctl. What's the difference between these two tools?

Answer 1

• rabbitmqctl is native command line tool written in Erlang, in general, it is used inside the same server where RabbitMQ is running.

• rabbitmqadmin is a Python interface for the HTTP management UI . You cannot use it if management UI plugin is not installed.

There is an overlap between the two tools, but there are a few features that you can use only with one of them.

With rabbitmqctl you can:

• manage the rabbitmq clustuer, by adding/removing nodes.
• reset the node
• handle logs files rotation
• stop the node

rabbitmqadmin is more for general admin, you have the same features you have in the management UI, you can also retrieve the node statistics.