7 Key Essentials for IBM MQ for Mission-Critical Messaging

Most corporate software systems are made up of independent components and applications, each of which may run different network protocols and operating systems. As businesses grow, develop, and change, the information systems that support them must be adaptable and flexible also.

Queue Managers

Queue Managers provide messaging and queuing services to application programs via program calls. These managers have a status and it’s important that they remain in a good state. If not, it postpones a message’s delivery time.

Cluster Queue Managers

Cluster Queue Managers are used in IBM WebSphere MQ environments where there are hundreds and thousands of Queue Managers. They allow you to consolidate control over two or more Queue Managers to simplify administration and balance workloads. As you monitor here, the SUSPEND status is cause for concern.

Queues

Each Queue Manager has a sequence of related queues. Messages live on these queues before being distributed to their destination, so their status is key. In addition, the number of messages on the queues and the length of time they have been waiting should be tracked to provide an early warning of potential bottlenecks that could impact the business.

Channels and Listeners

Channels acts as a communication track between various Queue Managers. Listeners manage network requests from incoming channels, while also managing the connection to the receiving channels.

Services

Depending on how you have IBM WebSphere MQ configured, you may also have WebSphere MQ Services defined. These are objects that allow you to control which programs are called when a Queue Manager has started or stopped. Since these programs are your own, they can be made to call tailored routines and can become key to your operation. As a result, you should look to monitor these services.

Events

WebSphere MQ has the built-in capability to generate messages for a range of events connected with the Configuration, Channel, Command, Logger, Performance, and Queue Manager Elements of the application. These messages can let you know if there is something that may impact the resiliency of the configuration.

Automatic Monitoring

Each WebSphere MQ component is essential for a successful delivery of messages. Real-time alerting of conditions that could potentially impact successful delivery of messages is a necessity. Be sure to make an allowance for short-lived conditions, such as a sudden increase or spike in the number of messages in a queue that only lasts a relatively short period of time.

What else?