Protecting pipeline safety through reliable messaging for North America's largest pipeline operator

Overview

The company, North America's largest pipeline operator, relies on RabbitMQ federation for synchronizing SCADA data across operational sites. Federation failures were causing dangerous delays in pipeline monitoring data delivery.

Challenge

RabbitMQ federation rebuild times had increased from 15 minutes to over an hour, with approximately 200,000 topic exchange bindings contributing to the problem. Consumers must receive data within 3 minutes to prevent alarms and within 10 minutes for mandatory shutdowns. Three to five federation incidents had occurred in the past year, directly threatening pipeline safety.

Environment

RabbitMQ 3.13.7 with federation, enterprise SCADA systems, approximately 200,000 topic exchange bindings.

Approach

AceMQ provided emergency remediation with a 2–4 day assessment followed by ongoing support. The team analyzed federation architecture, binding optimization, and alternative approaches including RabbitMQ streams for binding reduction.

Solution

• Diagnosed federation failure root causes linked to excessive topic exchange bindings
• Recommended architectural alternatives including RabbitMQ streams for binding optimization
• Provided emergency remediation scoping and immediate log analysis
• Designed long-term scalability roadmap for future mergers and system expansions
• Established ongoing support agreement with tiered response times

Outcome

Technologies