Role: IBM MQ consultant
Used Environments: development, testing and production with on prem setups
Technical Skills and Experience:
Installation and Configuration:
- IBM MQ instances deployment with integration in a complex system (versions from 7.0.1 to 9.2)
- Migrating of existing deprecated instances to newer versions
- Definition of distributed objects (queues, channels)
- Custom cluster setups with one or more FULL REPO config
- HACMP functionality on AIX infrastructure
- Multi instance setup with IBM MQ HA
- Generating and import of signed MQ SSL certificates in keystore
Administration and Monitoring:
- Debugging transfers and also technical layer issues in different situations (tracing of transfers and errors using the MQ logs, custom configurations of queue manager settings in config files: qm.ini, security exits)
- Defining the monitoring requirements for specific transfers and use cases.
- Fixing possible errors in object deployments or configuration that were reported by monitoring
- Management of SSL certificates
- Analyzing message routing in multiple scenarios:
- Sender -> Receiver with alias/remote queues pattern
- Cluster Sender with cluster queue deployment
Clustering and High Availability:
- Registering/de-registering queue managers in existing MQ clusters
- Performing refresh/delete of existing corrupt objects in the local repository for cluster shared objects
- Testing cluster setups in different patterns
- Deployment and management of active – standby configuration for AIX instances
Project Experience
Wholesale client:
- Deployment of a large web of interconnected IBM MQ instances for end to end data transfer with integration of multiple connectors which used JMS messaging standard (database integration with JDBC)
- Performing management operations on FULL repo queue managers and cluster mechanism
- Upgrade of old existing queue managers to newer versions and dependency management
- Management of the flows which were deployed using all kind of queues that were used by IIB for enhancement and processing (something similar with an Integration Bus)
- Monitoring specific queues and checks using Nagios and debugging different kind of issues
Bank client:
- Deployment of local queue managers that were integrated with a much larger group landscape of pre existing environments using clustering
- Management and alteration of the defined objects on the queue manager according with the client requests
- Registration of same queue manager in multiple MQ clusters for separation of workflows and data management
- Generating SSL certificate requests and importing the signed requests into the local keystore so that the end to end transfer was SSL SHA encrypted on a channel level – by security requirements imposed by the bank.
- Debugging specific issues related to Server Connect channels and client connectivity of different kind of scripts and applications
- Monitoring the availability of MQ connectivity using check_mk plugin for Nagios and IBM MQ integration
Tools and Technologies:
- Operating Systems: AIX and Linux
- Scripting languages: Bash and Python
- Management interfaces: MQ Explorer, Web Console and runmqsc
- Monitoring tools: check_mk
- Different admin tasks: IBM MQ sample programs (amqsput/amqsget)