External DB for Rules

[berayb]

Instead of keeping the rules on the local DB, I'd like to use an external connection. Is there any way to replace it with Redis for example?

[berayb]

@HJianBo Backing up mnesia files manually and downloading/uploading is not a production-level solution. What kind of methodology would you recommend for this?

[terry-xiaoyu]

We have to keep rules in the internal DB (mnesia) I think, as they are actually sort of configurations, jut like other configs in configuration files, except that rules can be added, edited and removed at runtime.

Rules are such configs so closed to the rule engine plugin (and the broker) that we'd better keep them in internal db or files. Put them out of the broker would involve more complexities to the architecture, e.g. availability of the external database, the lag of operations between db and emqx, the caching mechanism and the consistency problem when cache is used.

The solution for now is to save and re-create rules using backup/restore tools we've provided emqx enterprise 4.0.10 and later.

[vermaabhay]

If running EMQx in K8s, there should be a way to create rules using the rule engine config file to avoid the overhead of importing or creating the rules/action manually using the dashboard or cli.