Diving Deep into WebSphere MQ 9 - What‘s New and How to Install

Dear reader,

As an enterprise messaging expert, I‘m excited to dive deep on the latest release – WebSphere MQ 9. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll equip you with a thorough look at what‘s new and how to install MQ 9 on Linux.

Whether you‘re an MQ novice or seasoned pro, there‘s a lot to unpack. So buckle up for a detailed tour of MQ 9!

Changes Under the Hood – A Deeper Look

At a high-level, MQ 9 delivers important new enhancements like Confidentiality protection, Unicode 8.0 support, and more. But under the hood, there are dozens of other meaningful improvements. Let‘s peel back the layers.

Scalability Boosts

For starters, MQ 9 significantly raises the bar on scalability limits like maximum queue managers and queues. The table below shows some of the increased maximums:

Resource	Old MQ 8 Limit	New MQ 9 Limit	% Increase
Queue managers per instance	1200	20000	1567%
Queues per queue manager	5000	100000	2000%
Queue depth	2147483647	9223372036854775807	430%

With MQ 9, you can now manage 20X more queue managers and queues per installation. This is a major scalability leap.

In addition, MQ 9 description fields like queue names can now exceed 48 characters. This added flexibility helps remove limits as usage grows.

Encryption Flexibility

Encryption is critical for securing sensitive messages and data. MQ 9 adds more flexibility here by allowing key reuse when applying confidentiality policies.

For example, with the new KEY REUSE parameter, you can encrypt messages destined to multiple queues using the same key. This avoids the overhead of generating unique keys for each queue.

MQ 9 also lets you dynamically change encryption parameters without resetting the queue manager. This enhances encryption agility.

Availability Enhancements

MQ‘s High Availability feature provides automatic failover to keep messaging available despite outages. MQ 9 makes HA more resilient with optimizations like:

Faster HA switchover and failback processing
Eliminating queue manager restart during failover
Improved recovery of persistent messages during failover

These changes deliver higher HA availability and minimize disruption.

Manageability Improvements

Managing large MQ environments is now easier with usability improvements like:

Ability to cancel long-running REST API calls
Enhanced runmqsc command line experience
Wizards for simplified administration
MQ Explorer UI updates

Small touches like this really help streamline day-to-day management.

There are many other meaningful enhancements under the hood in MQ 9 – far too many to cover in one article! Suffice to say, this is one of the most impactful MQ releases in years.

MQ 9 Installation – Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Alright, enough talk – let‘s get MQ 9 installed! I‘ll walk you through the process on Linux using the trial version.

Download the Installation Files

First, head to IBM‘s MQ trial page and sign up for an account.

Once registered, you can download the MQ 9 Linux trial files – around 500 MB. Verify the file is named IBM_MQ_9.0.0.0_LINUX_X86-64_TRIAL.tar.gz.

Extract the Installation Files

Now extract the downloaded .tar.gz file:

gunzip -c IBM_MQ_9.0.0.0_LINUX_X86-64_TRIAL.tar.gz | tar xvf –

The files will be extracted into a directory called MQServer.

Accept the License Agreement

Navigate into the MQServer directory and run:

./mqlicense.sh

Carefully review and accept the license agreement.

Install the MQ 9 RPMs

Almost there! Now install the key MQ 9 RPM packages:

rpm -ivh MQSeriesRuntime-9.0.0-0.x86_64.rpm
rpm -ivh MQSeriesServer-9.0.0-0.x86_64.rpm

Be sure to install the Runtime first, as the Server depends on it.

You‘ll likely see some warnings about recommended settings not being met. We can optimize those later.

Verify the Installation

To confirm MQ 9 is properly installed, check that:

The MQ installation directory exists under /opt/mqm
Running dspmqver prints the version as 9.0.0.0

If all that checks out, installation was a success – congrats!

MQ 9 is ready for you to start exploring and building messaging applications. Dive in and enjoy the new capabilities!

Upgrading Considerations

Migrating production systems to MQ 9 takes planning and care. Here are some key considerations:

Test extensively – Rigorously test MQ 9 in staging environments under load before full production rollout.
Tune for performance – MQ 9 allows more connections, handles, and resources. Review capacity limits and tune as needed.
Assess compatibility – While MQ aims for backwards compatibility, review apps and usage patterns for potential breaking changes.
Stagger upgrades – Gradually upgrade MQ 9 region-by-region vs all at once. Maintain dual MQ versions during transition.
Train administrators – Educate admins on new features, CLI changes, encryption policies, etc.

With careful planning, you can smoothly transition to MQ 9 and unlock the powerful new capabilities.

Final Thoughts

Well dear reader, we really covered a lot of ground today on MQ 9! I hoped this detailed look at the new features and step-by-step installation guide was helpful.

MQ 9 is an exciting release packed with optimizations that make it more scalable, secure and resilient than ever. Now could be a good time to start planning your upgrade process.

Wishing you the best on your messaging journey! Let me know if you have any other MQ topics you‘d like me to illuminate.

Sincerely,

Your MQ Expert Friend