RabbitMQ - AWS EC2 Clustering hell - rabbitmq

Question

Sorry, should be shot for having to even ask this, but wasted day on this - and feel like I've read everything there is.
I can't create a cluster on my EC2 instances (3) that are spread on three different regions. The hosts:
rabbit#ip-172-31-47-217
rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82
rabbit#ip-172-31-36-111
The initial state before trying to make the cluster:
ubuntu#ip-172-31-47-217:~$ sudo rabbitmqctl cluster_status
Cluster status of node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-47-217' ...
[{nodes,[{disc,['rabbit#ip-172-31-47-217']}]},
{running_nodes,['rabbit#ip-172-31-47-217']},
{partitions,[]}]
ubuntu#ip-172-31-36-111:~$ sudo rabbitmqctl cluster_status
Cluster status of node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-36-111' ...
[{nodes,[{disc,['rabbit#ip-172-31-36-111']}]},
{running_nodes,['rabbit#ip-172-31-36-111']},
{partitions,[]}]
ubuntu#ip-172-31-1-82:~$ sudo rabbitmqctl cluster_status
Cluster status of node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82' ...
[{nodes,[{disc,['rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82']}]},
{running_nodes,['rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82']},
{partitions,[]}]
When I try to check status from one server for another:
sudo rabbitmqctl status -n rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82
Status of node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82' ...
Error: unable to connect to node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82': nodedown
nodes in question: ['rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82']
hosts, their running nodes and ports:
- unable to connect to epmd on ip-172-31-1-82: timeout (timed out)
current node details:
- node name: 'rabbitmqctl3835#ip-172-31-36-111'
- home dir: /var/lib/rabbitmq
- cookie hash: 0tsf/OyQZI7zobmv1Ia97w==
All three servers have the same erlang cookie hash.
I can verify the host names are setup properly:
host ip-172-31-36-111
ip-172-31-36-111.us-west-2.compute.internal has address 172.31.36.111
I know the ports are open:
netstat -plten | grep beam
Because I opened all TCP and UDP at this point as a test, no change.
and finally if this would behave differently given those failures:
sudo rabbitmqctl join_cluster --ram rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82
Clustering node 'rabbit#ip-172-31-47-217' with 'rabbit#ip-172-31-1-82' ...
Error: {cannot_discover_cluster,"The nodes provided are either offline or not running"}
Please help, being driven insane by this.

Answer 1

The problem is that they are in different regions (presumably in EC2-classic - you didn't mention whether you were using a VPC). This means they cannot communicate via their private IPs (see e.g. Can EC2 instances in different regions communicate over their private IP addresses?)
ping 172.31.36.111
will fail from one of the other servers, for example. Pinging using the hostname probably will probably even fail on the DNS lookup.
Your options are:
Put them in separate zones in a single region (in EC2 classic, they will be able to communicate). You could also use a VPC in this case, putting the in separate subnets but allowing interconnections via appropriately set up security groups.
Set up /etc/hosts on each server to point the relevant public IPs of the other servers (you could attach elastic IPs to each server to ensure stability across server restarts). You could also set the hostname of each server for clarity. Set you your security groups to allow access on the relevant ports that rabbitmq uses. There may be security implications of doing this, since the data will be travelling over the public internet.
Set up a VPN between each server in the cluster. Amazon VPC has a VPN facility, but there are ways of setting it up yourself I think.
I think only option 1 is simplest. Option 2 has major security implications (I believe there are ways of securing the connection between the cluster servers, but they aren't documented on the rabbitmq website as far as I can tell). Option 3 is complex but probably the best option if you need multiple regions.
Note that rabbitmq clusters aren't meant to be run over wide geographical areas, since they aren't too reliable in the face of network partitions. See here: https://www.rabbitmq.com/clustering.html