IBM MQ 9.4.2 is the second Continuous Delivery Release in the MQ 9.4 series of releases. A major deliverable of this release is the enablement of Native HA Cross Region Replication for containerized workloads which provides a disaster recovery capability and the ability to move workload between regions in a planned way for a Native High Availability group of queue managers. See the accompanying blog post for an excellent overview and demo of a planned and unplanned failover.
Here are your MQ and MQ Appliance supported options at this point:
- MQ SaaS (MQ 9.4.2) - MQ supported features
- IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance Continuous Delivery stream
- IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance 9.4 Long Term Support
- IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance 9.3 Long Term Support
- IBM MQ 9.2 Long Term Support
- IBM MQ Appliance M2003 hardware - IBM MQ Appliance support lifecycle
- Current model.
- Min firmware level is MQ 9.4 LTS
- New MQ Appliance M2003 models will ship with the 9.4 LTS firmware onboard by default, but you can move at any time to a future CD firmware if there is function of interest.
- IBM MQ Appliance M2002 hardware - IBM MQ Appliance support lifecycle
Where can I get IBM MQ 9.4.2 from?
For further information about what each Program entitles you to install check out the MQ license information page.
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What’s new in the MQ 9.4.2 release?
MQ updates
The MQ 9.4.2 Announcement letter contains information about the new capabilities added in this first Continuous Delivery update of the MQ 9.4 release.
What's new/changed - IBM MQ 9.4.2
What's new/changed - IBM MQ Appliance 9.4.2.
- Tutorials, samples and other education materials
- A range of step by step tutorials, videos and blogs have been published over the last few months taking you through certain MQ capabilities or showing how to integrate MQ with other technologies that can add additional value to your overall solution. Here are a few highlights from the MQ team:
- Streaming Queues :
- JWT / JWKS :
- Trouble shooting:
- Also keep an eye on the IBM MQ Community Blog for new articles appearing.
- IBM MQ
- MQ Console enhancements
- View MQ Message headers in the console to aid decision making.
- Views can be customized by adding or removing columns to focus only on objects of interest.
- On Linux systems, resolving operating system group membership for authentication can sometimes time out. Refer to the What's Changed documentation for an alternative method of resolving this for the MQ Web Server component.
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- Security
- New qmi.ini attributes for controlling the level of checks for JWKS certificate validation and revocation status.
- IBM MQ classes for JMS and IBM MQ Classes for Java support the FIPS 140-3 implementation in Semeru 8, 11, 17 and 21 java runtimes. Note that FIPS 140-2 is the default profile.
If migrating from an IBM Java 8 to Semeru Java runtime please refer to the What's Changed documentation for configuring FIPS 140-3.
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- Application development
- Multiple JMS connections from the same Java virtual machine can be configured to be treated as a single application instance. Used in conjunction with MQ Uniform Clusters it would ensure all connections are to the same queue manager and get moved around the cluster together when any load balancing occurs.
- AMQP and MQTT application properties can now be configured using setamp, dspamqp, setmqxr and dspmqxr commands instead of editing configuration files directly.
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- Performance monitoring
A new mqperfck command can generate a HTML report containing performance metrics for specified queues or channels over a period of time. Metrics for CPU, IO, locks, network time, MQ API (MQI) counts and other data points are available to give an insight into workload patterns without needing to capture MQ trace.
- IBM MQ for z/OS
- MQ Console enhancements, as described above, plus:
- View shared message data sets on z/OS queue managers.
- Add, view, delete and update coupling facility structures on z/OS queue managers.
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- Data conversion support for the latest GB18030-2022 standard.
Data conversion is supported between CCSID 1388 (GB18030 level 1 and level 2 characters) and Unicode (UTF-8, CCSID 1208 and UTF-16, CCSID 1200) and vice-versa.
- IBM MQ Advanced
- Native HA Cross Region Replication in containers
Native HA Cross Region Replication allows replication between Native HA Groups in two regions, providing a disaster recovery option (with minimal data loss) for a Native HA group. Failover to the recovery site may planned (e.g. for maintenance) or unplanned. In the planned case there is no loss of data.
This capability is available for MQ in container environments on OpenShift or Kubernetes.
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- Key generation for MQ Managed File Transfer
Now supports private keys generated in the OpenSSH format, alongside the RSA format. Both formats are compatible with the MQ protocol bridge agent.
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- Kafka Connect
The Kafka Connect XML Converter is now included with the Kafka Connectors at https://ibm.biz/mq94kafkaconnectors. The converter and transformation plug-ins make it easier to work with XML data in Kafka Connect pipelines.
- Deprecations and removals
Take a look at the IBM MQ Deprecated, Stabilized and Removed features page to understand what has changed in the MQ 9.4.2 release.
New deprecations:
- system.broker.clients.data queue from the CSQ4INSR.jcl sample
- For MQ Internet Pass-Thru (IPT) SSL_ECDH CipherSuites are disabled by default.
Removals:
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- IBM XL C/C++ for AIX® 16 compiler support.
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Can I get a copy of IBM MQ for development purposes?
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Downloadable resources
A number of MQ components are made available on IBM Fix Central and elsewhere for ease of download. Below are the links to the available components. Where applicable, they will show the latest 9.3 Continuous Delivery (CD) and Long Term Support (LTS) updates for each component. Be sure to know which you require.
Main product install image and fix pack download documentation:
Maintenance quick links:
Checksums and Signatures:
Clients:
Components:
Containers:
Development:
Tip: Try opening the links in a private browsing tab if they don’t correctly resolve.
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MQ System Requirements and documentation
The system requirements are documented at the links below. IBM MQ Continuous Delivery releases are being made available on z/OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux on x86-64, Linux on IBM z Systems, Linux on Little Endian Power (RHEL, SLES and Ubuntu) and AIX.
Further information can be found in the IBM MQ Documentation and IBM MQ Appliance Documentation.
MQ 9.4 operating system support
|
MQ 9.4 LTS |
Removed compared to MQ 9.3 LTS |
| AIX |
7.2 TL5, 7.3 TL1 |
7.3 TL0 |
| IBM i |
7.4, 7.5 |
7.3 |
| Linux |
RHEL 8.8+, 9.2+
SLES 15 SP4
Ubuntu 22.04
|
RHEL 7.9, 8.4, 8.6. 9.0
SLES 12, 15 SP2 & SP3
Ubuntu 20.04 |
| Windows |
Windows Server 2019, 2022
Windows 11 23H2 or later |
Windows 10 |
| z/OS |
2.5, 3.1 |
2.4 |
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What function has released in previous updates?
IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance 9.4.1 Continuous Delivery Release
IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance 9.4 Long Term Support Release
IBM MQ and IBM MQ Appliance 9.3 Long Term Support Release
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Remind me how the Continuous Delivery support model works…
It's worth reminding you what the Continuous Delivery support model means for MQ.
- MQ 9.4 LTS is supported for a minimum of 5 years from its availability in June 2024, and will receive fix only maintenance through updates versioned 9.4.0.1, 9.4.0.2 and so on.
- MQ CD updates will be delivered with the 3rd digit change – 9.4.1, 9.4.2 and so on. Defect support for a CD release is available for 12 months from the availability of the release or while it remains one of the two most recent CD releases, whichever is longer, so you need to keep moving forward with the MQ CD releases.
- MQ CD updates will be delivered with new function enabled by default.
- The IBM MQ FAQ for Long Term Support and Continuous Delivery Releases will hopefully answer most of your questions.
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