Everyone gets the point. MQ V9.1 delivers the latest features in a Long Term Support release.

They say anticipation is half the fun. And one of the good things about the split release approach for MQ with Continuous Delivery releases and Long Term Support Releases is that as new function is developed and made available in the CD stream, customers intending to use the LTS release can build their anticipation for the new function for up to 2 years.

 

Of course, there is nothing to stop early experimentation with the CD releases even though you may be waiting for the LTS availability. But the good news is that the wait is now over and IBM has published the announcement letter for MQ V9.1 and MQ Advanced on distributed platforms here. Also MQ V9.1 is being announced for the MQ Appliance, as well as a new model of the MQ Appliance – the M2002. You can read that announcement letter here, and a blog about it here. Also we have announced MQ V9.1 for z/OS – there is an announcement letter here for the MLC offering, and another announcement letter for MQ Advanced for z/OS VUE and other z/OS OTC offerings here.

 

Has it been worth the wait? What has been the most anticipated new capability? It’s not like a Christmas present where you are not sure what’s under the tree. Almost every feature, function and enhancement in MQ V9.1 has been already available in one of the CD releases, so there shouldn’t be much of a surprise. You can read some of my past blog entries covering the prior V9.0.x releases (V9.0.1, V9.0.2, V9.0.3, V9.0.4, and V9.0.5)

 

And don’t forget than the previous LTS release – MQ V9.0 included important updates that have proved very useful such as the enhancements to MQ AMS providing end to end encryption, including encryption at rest without performance impacts, which can be very helpful in addressing GDPR requirements.

 

However, let’s cover here some of the most interesting areas of focus over the last couple of years of function, and which ones seem to have attracted the most customer interest.

 

There are many different areas of enhancement, which hopefully means pretty much all users have something to interest them.

Simple and more powerful Administration

• MQ Console – a customized browser based for configuration and operations
• REST API for admin – an extensive set of APIs enabling new tools to be written using REST HTTP calls, usable across older releases as well
• Improved awareness of MQ activities and logging – Publishing MQ statistics to Prometheus and Grafana; forwarding MQ error logs to ElasticSearch or Splunk; Error logs output JSON for improved parsing
• Automation of Linear Logging – simplifying the operations and administration of logging and management of those logs.

 

Supporting Developers

• REST API for messaging – Enabling developers writing simple applications and micro-services to access MQ capabilities.
• Additional API and protocol support – as well as publishing a new online tutorial for using MQ
• Connecting to Salesforce – the MQ bridge to Salesforce allows for the 2 way publishing of information between SalesForce and MQ
• The MQ Bridge to blockchain – only available for MQ Advanced or MQ Appliance customers.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery without complexity and cost

• Replicated Data Queue Managers for HA – synchronous replication across 3 nodes using local disks instead of network attached storage.
• Replicated Data Queue Managers for DR – manual failover with synchronous or asynchronous replication across 2 nodes.
• RDQM requires MQ Advanced licenses. But with specific licenses to reduce cost.

 

Managed File Transfers

• Licensing, packaging and pricing changes. MFT Agents are now free with MQ Advanced or MQ Appliance, and both embeddable and redistributable.
• FTP Protocol Bridge enhancements
• Improved reliability and monitoring for Transfers

 

 

z/OS enhancements

Many of the updates described above also apply to MQ on z/OS. There are also some additional enhancements specific to z/OS

• AMS Confidentiality Performance. MQ Advanced for z/OS VUE sees enhancements in performance of this feature in MQ V9.1
• Extended deployment for MFT – with MQ Advanced for z/OS VUE.
• The MQ Bridge for blockchain now using the Hyperledger Composer API to build out the connectivity.
• Connecting CICS and MQ – Java programs running on a CICS Liberty JVM server can now use MQ classes for JMS to access MQ capabilities.

 

AS MQ now moves to MQ 9.1, this time the point is available for everyone. All the features above, and more I haven’t had a chance to describe will be available later in July 2018. Whether deploying in on-premises environments, on physical Appliances, on VMs, in containers, on private clouds like IBM Cloud Private, or public clouds like IBM Cloud, AWS, or Azure, the Long Term Support release now means the 2 years of functional enhancements, tested already in multiple Continuous Delivery releases are now available for more to use.

UPDATE: MQ V9.1 now available as of July 23rd 2018. Read more here.

And there is plenty more to come. Watch this space both for more updates and use cases of these features, and well as future updates in the next Continuous Delivery releases.

Tags: Blockchain, containers, end to end encryption, IBM announcement, IBM Cloud private, IBM MQ, IBM MQ Advanced, IBM MQ V9.1, Linear Logging, Long Term Support, MQ LTS, MQ Managed File Transfer, RDQM, REST API, REST API for Messaging, V9.1