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FileWave: Why we moved from ZeroMQ to NATS

Massimo Costa

Posted on Feb 1st, 2023

FileWave Device Management System

Filewave is a cross-platform/multi-platform Device Management System that helps big organizations to manage their devices from a single interface.​

We are able to manage devices of different platforms:

  • ​Windows
  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Apple TV
  • Android
  • Chromebook

​and we're able to:

  • Get inventory data (CPU, RAM, free disk space, ....)
  • Install software and updates
  • Send specific commands (reboot, lock , ....) to devices​

FileWave Before NATS

​Before we switched to NATS, the internal messaging was implemented using ZeroMQ.

ZeroMQ is a library that offers several mechanisms and patterns to implement a lot of different communication strategies. It works well but has several limitations (for our use case):

  • It's just a library: so we had to implement a "central" server
  • A single socket can use just a single pattern; if you need a PUB/SUB and a REQ/REPLY you have to open two sockets
  • Not supported in web applications; the messaging with the WEB interfaces was implemented by "converting" ZeroMQ messages and sending them to the UI using SSE (Server Sent Event)
  • It does not support out-of-the-box TLS
  • It does not support use cases that require persistence

Why we needed to migrate

​The main drivers for migrations were:​

  • We have strict requirements for having TLS on all communication channels
  • We need support for web applications
  • Message persistence and replay are something we'll need to use soon​

Why NATS?

​We did some research based on our needs:

  • ​Client libraries for (at least) C/C++, Python, Web Browsers
  • Cloud-ready/friendly
  • mTLS support
  • Easy to install/configure and monitor
  • With good documentation and community

And we found a few candidates:

  • RabbitMQ
  • Kafka
  • NATS

​We decided then to do some parallel investigations and, based on our specific use cases - we decided that NATS was the best choice for us.

The main drivers for picking NATS were:

  • ​Easy to integrate into our installers (thanks to Go)
  • By far the simplest to install and configure
  • Very small install size and memory footprint (thanks to the Go engine)
  • Pre-built binaries for all platforms we need to support
  • Wide-range of authentication systems (for instance we use mTLS for devices and server components and JWT for authenticating users on User Interfaces)

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