Introduction to the IBM MQ Appliance

The IBM® MQ Appliance provides IBM MQ V9.2 on an appliance. You can create one or more queue managers on an appliance and connect them as part of an IBM MQ network.

The IBM MQ Appliance is designed to be easy to deploy. It has a command-line interface and a web UI for configuring and administering the appliance, and a web-based user interface, the IBM MQ Console, for administering queue managers. You can set up multiple administration user accounts on the appliance.

The IBM MQ Appliance can provide a number of messaging solutions in your enterprise:

Rationalize your existing installation

If you are an existing IBM MQ user, you might want to use appliances to consolidate your IBM MQ architecture. You might be in the situation where you have a large messaging estate that is spread across a number of different hardware platforms. Maintaining and keeping this estate up to date can prove to be a large overhead; simplifying your estate by adding IBM MQ Appliances can greatly reduce your total cost of operation. For more information about scenario, see Reduce operational costs with the IBM MQ Appliance

Install an easy-to-update solution from the start

If you are a new IBM MQ user, using IBM MQ Appliances from the outset can make your solution easier to later extend. You just add more appliances.

Implement high availability

If you need 24/7 reliability, you can pair appliances up to provide a high availability solution. If your system fails, you are rapidly switched over to a replica of that system.

Implement disaster recovery

You can implement disaster recovery to manually switch over to a replica in a different data center should your system fail.

Place a messaging server in outlying premises

If you have outlying offices, factories, or branches, you can place an IBM MQ Appliance on those premises to provide a simple, distributed messaging solution. You could also employ the same solution for a business partner, by putting an appliance on their premises.

Participate in Managed File Transfer deployment

The IBM MQ Appliance can be used to run the coordination queue manager in an IBM MQ Managed File Transfer deployment. IBM MQ Managed File Transfer functions enable users to move data held in files as IBM MQ messages to provide file-to-file transfer, file-to-message transfer, and message-to-file transfer. No local user files are stored on the IBM MQ Appliance. The appliance participates to host a coordination queue manager, command queue manager, or an agent queue manager to move messages that contain file data. For more information, see Configuring the coordination queue manager for MFT and Configuring MFT network queue managers in the IBM MQ documentation. (Note that you cannot use the stand-alone loggers in conjunction with an appliance-based coordination queue managers.)

Implement advanced message security (AMS)

To implement IBM MQ AMS on the IBM MQ Appliance you use the runmqsc commands to manipulate security policies for individual queue managers. See Configuring IBM MQ Advanced Message Security.

Concentrate client connections

Connections to a remote queue manager are more efficient than client connections. If you have a large number of client applications it can be beneficial to concentrate their connections to reduce load on the target queue managers. The IBM MQ Appliance is an ideal platform for hosting intermediate queue managers in this architecture. This pattern is particularly relevant for z/OS, where concentrating client connections can significantly reduce MIPS on the z/OS LPAR. For more information, see Design and performance considerations for z/OS applications in the IBM MQ documentation, in particular, see the section "How many connections or concurrent users are supported".

Implement a messaging gateway

You can implement gateway queue managers at the edge of a network or between isolated network zones. The IBM MQ Appliance form factor helps to provide security, control, and integration through a common foundation that it shares with the IBM DataPower Gateway, see DataPower documentation.

The IBM MQ Appliance can be easily updated by downloading and installing a new firmware version. You can install certificates onto the appliance, and connect to your IBM MQ V9.2 network by using TLS.

You run applications on clients that connect to the appliance.