IBM MQ skill portfolio

  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)