Support for building your own IBM MQ container images

The IBM® MQ container sample provides unsupported sample wrapper code for enabling IBM MQ in a container. This is the most flexible container solution, but it requires you to have strong skills in configuring containers, and to own the resultant container.

Downloads

The IBM MQ container sample is available here: https://github.com/ibm-messaging/mq-container.

Note: The container sample, and any code you add or modify, is not supported by IBM.

For use with the container sample, you download an IBM MQ non-install image.

If you have an IBM MQ Advanced for Developers license, use the Continuous Delivery (CD) version of IBM MQ. These non-install images are available from Downloading IBM MQ 9.4 CD.
If you have a Production license, use either the Long Term Support (LTS) or CD version of IBM MQ. These non-install images are available from Fix Central.

Supported platforms

See System Requirements for IBM MQ for detailed information on the supported container runtime environments and Linux® distributions. IBM MQ can be used with container runtime environments provided by containerd, cri-o, Podman or Docker. IBM provides defect and usage support for the core IBM MQ software, but does not help you configure and debug problems with your container environment or deployment pipeline.

The container sample uses a Red Hat® Universal Base Image as a base image. Red Hat provides support for the Red Hat packages only for containers running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS hosts. See Red Hat Container Support Policy for more information. You can build your own container image on any Linux base image that matches a Linux distribution supported by IBM MQ, for example:

Red Hat Universal Base Image
Ubuntu
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Base Container Image

Supported CPU architectures

See System Requirements for IBM MQ.

Duration of support for IBM MQ

Support is provided for the Production versions of the IBM MQ non-install images. For LTS, support duration is 5 years from General Availability. For CD, each incremental release is supported for 1 year from General Availability. For more information, see the IBM MQ FAQ for Long Term Support and Continuous Delivery releases.

Fix availability for IBM MQ

For the Production versions of the IBM MQ non-install images, fixes are provided throughout the duration of support. You can also request fixes. If a CD update is no longer eligible for defect fixes, update to a version that is eligible, and if the defect can be recreated a fix will be provided. For information on available LTS and CD releases and latest fixes, see IBM MQ fixes by version.

Unavailable features

You cannot use Operating System (OS) users with an IBM MQ non-install image. If you want to use OS users, then you need to build your own image using the RPM installer, for which there is no sample.

See System Requirements for IBM MQ for full details of supported components. There are some samples available, but not for every component.