Staying on top of support for MQ Appliance M2001.
With so many important parts to your infrastructure, it can be difficult to keep track of what is and what isn’t in support. In the case of the MQ Appliance, you need to be aware of both the firmware and hardware lifecycle dates if you want continued access to fixes, patches and help with problems (see here for information on how this works).
Awareness of key end of support dates also helps you to plan ahead so that you can have enough time for migration and the associated testing, and so that you can take advantage of procurement cycles for hardware upgrades.
Regarding firmware, if you’re on 9.2 or 9.2.x, you’re supported.
M2001 scheduled for End of Support
However, the M2001 model is scheduled for End of Support (EoS). EoS was announced for the M2001 back in 2018, with the date set at July 2023.
This is still a couple of years away, but time can pass quickly, and no one wants to be caught out with only two months to go. If this upgrade is something that you want to have in your 2022 budget, it is worth thinking about it now.
The M2002
The M2002 is the current model of the MQ Appliance. In addition to the updated tech, it boasts double the SSDs, double the RAID cache, two additional 10Gb ports and new 40Gb ports. There continue to be two models available (M2002A and M2002B), as well as the option of upgrading to the more powerful model — without ordering new hardware — should you need to grow.
Why continue with the MQ Appliance?
The MQ Appliance continues to be a great solution for those wanting a simple and consolidated messaging solution. Its performance alone can be reason enough for businesses to select it. The M2001 had a lifecycle of seven years, which when compared to the three-to-five-year life of other servers (that are not tuned to get the most out of the software on them, nor dedicated to their sole use) is great value. As demonstrated in the research paper “Reduce operational costs with the IBM MQ Appliance,” when you add in the data center and time savings, the case gets even stronger.
Is the appliance form factor still relevant?
In a world where containers are often held up as the answer — regardless of the question — it can be tempting to think that the MQ Appliance is obsolete. However, the MQ Appliance provides MQ, dependencies and OS all pre-loaded onto fine-tuned hardware. In some ways, it’s like a container in a container. On top of that, it is simple, performs incredibly well and offers resiliency both through the underlying MQ technology and through the in-built High Availability and Disaster Recovery across data centers.
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What now?
Read the M2002 datasheet or visit the other MQ pages for more options. Have a conversation with your sales rep and start planning!