MQ

MQ

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  • 1.  MQ Container

    Posted Fri January 13, 2017 04:27 PM

    We have docker container, but were challenged about the rationale of using MQ container, most concerns are about persistent data store and transaction support. Thoughts?



  • 2.  RE: MQ Container

    Posted Wed January 18, 2017 08:10 PM

    I saw your question a while back, but didn't respond as I didn't really understand the question. I figured someone else who knew what you mean would respond instead. Since you haven't had a response yet, I'll 'fess up and ask - What do you mean by an "MQ Container"?



  • 3.  RE: MQ Container

    Posted Fri January 20, 2017 01:54 AM

    I guess the question is what happens to persistent data if MQ is running in a docker container?  Is there a way to put persistent data in a central store so that if your container fail and you must restart another one that you can still get to your messages?



  • 4.  RE: MQ Container

    Posted Fri January 20, 2017 09:38 AM

    That's a standard configuration option with Docker containers.  You need to configure MQ to utilize Docker's Data Volumes for queue and log storage.



  • 5.  RE: MQ Container

    Posted Thu January 26, 2017 10:02 AM

    If you're just considering Docker on a single host, then there's very little difference between the Docker case and the non-Docker case.  All you need to do is tell Docker which directory on the host filesystem to map into the Docker container running an MQ queue manager. From there on, the storage management is exactly the same.

    Things change if you are using Containers as a Service (CaaS) such as Kubernetes or Docker Swarm.  In this case, you have a set of hosts, and your MQ queue manager could be scheduled onto any host.  In the case of a host failure, the CaaS re-schedules your container onto a different host, and needs to be paired back with the same storage, usually using networked storage.  There are multiple types of networked storage available: block storage, such as Ceph RBD, AWS EBS, OpenStack Cinder or Bluemix Block Storage; or networked filesystems such as NFSv4, CephFS, GlusterFS, AWS EFS, OpenStack Manila, or Bluemix File Storage.  For MQ, block storage is probably the safest choice, if you can.  The networked filesystems are very much usable as well, but you may need to run your own additional testing to check compatibility, similar to what is required for MQ multi-instance queue managers.