IBM MQ 9.4.3 is the next Continuous Delivery Release in the MQ 9.4 series of releases. This release has focused on security, resilience and productivity, with updates for the MQ Console, Kafka Connectors, Open Telemetry tracing and JSON Web Tokens.
Here are your MQ and MQ Appliance supported options at this point:
- MQ SaaS (MQ 9.4.3) - 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 9.4.3 from?
For further information about what each Program entitles you to install check out the MQ license information page.
- Distributed platforms: Download instructions for AIX, Linux and Windows.
- z/OS: Download instructions.
- shopZ for z/OS
Note that on z/OS there are CD and LTS orderable features in shopZ. They are functionally identical at 9.4.0 but you must ensure you install the one that matches the upgrade path you wish to follow - LTS or CD.
- Please refer to the statement of direction in the MQ 9.4.3 Announcement letter for z/OS availability.
- z/OS offerings are:
- 5655-MQ9 – IBM MQ for z/OS
- 5655-VU9 – IBM MQ for z/OS Value Unit Edition
- 5655-AV9 – IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS
This is a bundle of MQ Advanced Message Security and MQ Managed File Transfer capability (no MQ entitlement included)
- 5655-AV1 – IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition
This is a bundle of MQ Advanced Message Security, MQ Managed File Transfer and MQ for z/OS Value Unit Edition capability
- MQ Appliance:
- IBM MQ OpenShift Operator: Deployment instructions and release history
- IBM MQ SaaS: IBM MQ SaaS managed service, which has different T-shirt size plans and options for placing the queue manager in an IBM Cloud or AWS data center.
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What’s new in the MQ 9.4.3 release?
MQ updates
The MQ 9.4.3 Announcement letter contains information about the new capabilities added in this first Continuous Delivery update of the MQ 9.4 release.
7 key features in MQ 9.4.3 - security, reliability and productivity.
What's new/changed - IBM MQ 9.4.3
What's new/changed - IBM MQ Appliance 9.4.3.
- Tutorials, samples and other education materials
- Recent updates to our Developer focused tutorials, videos and blogs are below, 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:
- An Agentic AI proof of concept looking at how MQ might support asynchronous, agent-based architectures.
- The Streaming Queues series has a new article about extending the reach of streaming queues, with a look at some use cases.
- Some of the samples in MQ Developer Patterns have been JWT enabled and the Connecting a JMS sample to an IBM MQ queue manager using JWT with a JWKS updated.
- Client Channel Definition Tables (CCDTs) have been long been a part of MQ, holding the connection information an application requires to connect to MQ. A new deep dive article takes a look at CCDTs and how to use them most effectively with Uniform Clusters.
- TheIBM MQ Ansible roles and Galaxy collection is updated with MQ 9.4.3 as the default installation.
- Take a step back from Queues and Topics and take a look at the roots of MQ as a messaging network, providing common APIs, capabilities and qualities of service over a wide range of environments, greatly simplifying application development. Put your message in to the MQ network and let MQ deal with the complexities of how to deliver this to the destination.
- See an overview of using certificates in an OpenShift environment and how MQ keys and keystores are defined in the Custom Resource.
- From Commodores to Pis, a useful reminder that we make an MQ install image available that will run on 64-bit Raspberry Pis, including the Raspberry Pi Zero 2.
- Also keep an eye on the IBM MQ Community Blog for new articles appearing.
- IBM MQ Operator preview on Amazon EKS
- A preview of the IBM MQ Operator on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is now available. The preview allows you to deploy MQ Operator 3.6 on EKS. The preview release is not supported, but you can get started now by installing the MQ Operator Helm chart from GitHub. Raise any issues or join in with a discussion on the github repo to let us know what you think.
- IBM MQ
- MQ Console enhancements
- A new queue manager status tab provide real time status of the queue manager
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- Security
- Authentication events: Administrators can view successful and failed authentication events, for improved security and audit purposes.
- Improved JSON Web Token (JWT) handling for MQ classes for JMS SE: MQ JMS SE can authenticate client applications with a JWT authorization service
- Longer User IDs
- A much requested enhancement for MQ to support IDs longer than 12 characters. Messages can be securely transmitted to remote queue managers based on point-of-entry authorization and authentication. Please refer to the product documentation are there are some restrictions for where longer User IDs can be used.
- Native HA and Cross-region Replication Add-On parts
Add-on parts for MQ for Kubernetes and OpenShift are available, providing a cost-effective method of licensing Native High Availability (HA) and Cross Region Replication (CRR) when running MQ in container environments.
Native HA and Cross-Region Replication license entitlement can be obtain either through purchasing IBM MQ Advanced entitlement, or IBM MQ + the Add-On part. An equivalent part is also available for non-production environments.
As a reminder, Native HA provides a straightforward way of building a highly resilient containerized MQ instance, with 3 synchronous MQ active/passive nodes in a quorum. Cross Region Replication enables asynchronous replication to a second site enabling a rapid disaster recovery mechanism.
- IBM MQ Advanced
- MQ Connectors for Kafka
The Kafka Connect framework is now included with IBM MQ for faster set up of MQ-Kafka connectors.
Note that investigation of support tickets relating to Kafka Connect is limited to usage with the IBM MQ source and sink connectors.
- MQ Container US Federal compliance
MQ Container can generate audit logs that include the level of information required for US Federal deployments, and can operate in IPv6 environments.
- IBM MQ Appliance
- The MQ Console and Security enhancements for IBM MQ are also available for MQ Appliance users.
- Open Telemetry, which has been in IBM MQ for a few CD releases, is now available on the MQ Appliance, giving enhanced insight into application flows through the appliance using any tooling compatible with OTEL standards.
- Deprecations and removals
Take a look at the IBM MQ Deprecated, Stabilized and Removed features page to understand what has changed in the MQ 9.4.3 release.
New deprecations:
- IBM MQ Toolkit for MacOS support for MacOS x86-64 hardware is deprecated. The MQ Toolkit for MacOS continues to support ARM64 hardware.
Removals:
-
- See the Statement of Direction section above regarding security currency.
- Statements of Direction
- Intended minimum Operating System support for the next MQ Long Term Support release
To help you plan ahead the MQ 9.4.3 announcement letter includes an outlook on what we intend the minimum operating system support to be.
- Native High Availability and Cross-Region Replication is evolving
IBM intends to release Native HA and Cross Region Replication functionality (currently available for MQ in containers) on Linux distributions for x86-64, IBM Power, and IBM Z architectures.
- Security currency
- IBM intends to remove 3DES CipherSpecs for TLS communications, including the deprecated TLS 1.2 3DES CipherSpecs ECDHE_ECDSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA256 and ECDHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA256, in the next mod level release of IBM MQ 9.4.x.
- IBM intends to remove support for RSA certificates with a key size less than 2048 bits, for IBM MQ for Multiplatforms and IBM MQ Appliance firmware.
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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 9.4.2 Continuous Delivery Release
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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