WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit Overview

WebSphere MQ (formerly known as MQSeries) is an IBM software product that provides reliable and guaranteed one time only delivery of messages. The core element of WebSphere MQ is the queue manager which handles one or more queues that are used to send (put) and receive (get) messages. Once a message is put into a queue, it is guaranteed that this message is persistent and will be delivered only once.

The WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit enables LifeKeeper to protect WebSphere MQ queue managers including the command server, the listener and the persistent queue manager data. Protection of the queue manager listener can be optionally disabled on a per queue manager basis to support configurations that do not handle client connects or to enable the administrator to shut down the listener without causing a LifeKeeper recovery attempt.

The WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit provides a mechanism to recover protected WebSphere MQ queue managers from a failed primary server onto a backup server. LifeKeeper can detect failures either at the server level (via a heartbeat) or resource level (by monitoring the WebSphere MQ daemons) so that control of the protected WebSphere MQ services are transferred to a backup server.

The WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit also supports multiple installations of WebSphere MQ to be installed and run on the same system. With multi-version MQ support a Queue Manager from MQ software version 7.x and a Queue Manager from MQ software version 8.x can both be protected by the Recovery Kit. Prior to the addition of this support in version 9.0.2 of the WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit only 1 version of the MQ software could be installed and running on the system (NOTE: the installation required it be installed in the default location – /opt/mqm).