ElasticMQ on Ubuntu 24.04

ElasticMQ on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

ElasticMQ is a self-hosted, in-memory message queue that speaks the Amazon SQS API. Point aws-cli, boto3 or any AWS SDK at its endpoint with --endpoint-url and you get a fully local, SQS-compatible queue with no AWS account, no network egress and no per-message cost. It is the standard way to run SQS-backed applications on a laptop, in CI pipelines and in air-gapped environments, and to write fast, deterministic integration tests against real queue semantics rather than mocks.

This cloudimg image installs the pinned official ElasticMQ 1.7.1 server (OpenJDK 17) under systemd and hardens it for deployment on Microsoft Azure.

Secure by default

ElasticMQ ships upstream with no authentication of any kind. cloudimg binds it to loopback only and fronts it with nginx: port 9324 is the drop-in SQS endpoint your AWS SDK clients point at, and port 80 exposes the same API behind a per-VM HTTP Basic Auth gate. There is no known bootstrap credential in the image: the admin password is generated uniquely on the first boot of every VM and stored only as a bcrypt hash.

What is included

• ElasticMQ 1.7.1 running as a hardened systemd service under OpenJDK 17
• A drop-in Amazon SQS-compatible endpoint on port 9324 for aws-cli, boto3 and the AWS SDKs
• Per-VM HTTP Basic Auth on port 80, with a unique password generated on first boot
• An unauthenticated /healthz endpoint for Azure Load Balancer probes
• Fully patched Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with automatic security updates enabled
• A paired step-by-step deployment guide and 24/7 cloudimg support

Licensing

ElasticMQ is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. The cloudimg hourly charge covers packaging, hardening, security patching and 24/7 support. Storage is in-memory by default, which is ideal for development, CI and testing; enable ElasticMQ persistence for durable queues.