What are practical differences between the Mosquitto vs Mosca (now Aedes) MQTT brokers?

[adamelli]

I did a previous project with Mosca, I think. My class ended up having to also use cloudmqtt.com:
https://flows.nodered.org/flow/9a74c7337433d482002d57c3a8bbc883

Now, no longer a formal student, I need an MQTT broker. The deliverable involves an ESP32 connected to more basic microcontrollers like Arduino Nanos. The user will need be able to add more, say, Nano controlled devices. I think this is called horizontal scaling.

Is the new maintained library Aedes, previously Mosca, capable of this? It's really hard to find examples of Aedes that I understand. Should Mosquitto be used instead?

I'm not sure if I'm understanding the post below, but should I really be looking for a broker with clustering?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40229375/mosquitto-vs-mosca-horizontal-scalability-and-resilience If the broker should involve clustering, would HiveMQ be a decent choice?

And if those specific questions are too specific, for lifelong learning, what are some practical differences between Mosquitto and Aedes?

[Paul-Reed]

Can you clarify please where node-RED fits into your project.

[adamelli]

A similar application to this: User programmed commands
Just instead of controlling a sequence of directions, it's going to be a sequence of something similar.

[knolleary]

How many clients are you intending to have connected to the broker? Unless you're getting into 1000s then there's little point worrying about clustering or horizontal scaling.

A single mosquitto instance is very capable and more than enough for most individual uses.

[adamelli]

Definitely not over 1000. I also miss-applied the idea of horizontal scaling anyway; but thanks for clearing that up! (I thought it was applying new devices, not new clients.)