Configuring high availability (HA) support for IBM MQ

Edit online

Configure IBM MQ queue managers in high availability (HA) environments for unified view of continuous historical data by using Instana.

Supported HA environments

Edit online
  • Replicated data queue manager (RDQM)
  • Multi-instance queue manager
  • Native HA queue manager
  • Single-instance queue manager in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)

Prerequisite

Edit online

Install the Instana host agent on each monitored queue manager instance locally for the following HA queue managers:

  • Replicated data queue manager (RDQM): Install the agent on each RDQM host.

    Note: The RDQM host must be a virtual machine or physical machine of the Linux platform.

  • Multi-instance queue manager:

    • For the distributed platform: Install the agent on each queue manager instance of the multi-instance host.
    • For the Kubernetes environment: Install the agent in the Kubernetes environment.

  • Native HA queue manager: Install the agent in the Kubernetes environment.

  • Single-instance queue manager in Red Hat OCP: Install the agent in the Kubernetes environment.

Enabling HA support

Edit online

The IBM MQ HA queue manager support is not enabled by default to ensure consistency with a normal queue manager.

To monitor IBM MQ HA queue managers, set the support_ha parameter to true in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml as shown in the following configuration:

com.instana.plugin.ibmmq:
  enabled: true
  poll_rate: 60 # The default is 60 seconds. The minimum value is 30 seconds.
  support_ha: false # true or false. The default value is false. If the value is true, the HA Queue manger instances will be shown as 1 aggregated Queue manager.
Note: In the Red Hat OCP environment, if you want to manually set support_ha in the configuration.yaml file to activate HA support, you must edit the deployment file and redeploy the Instana host agent. In other environments, the HA support is activated without restarting an agent.

Viewing HA queue managers data

Edit online

The Instana UI displays the IBM MQ HA queue manager data as follows:

Before enabling HA support

Edit online

Before HA support, all instances of HA queue managers are monitored and shown separately with the label qmName@host in the Instana UI. Each instance is shown as a layer of the host where it is running.

After enabling HA support

Edit online

After HA support, all instances of HA queue managers are monitored as a unified queue manager and their data is aggregated:

  • All instances of HA queue managers are monitored and displayed as one queue manager with the label qmNameas a separated box.
  • The name qmName@host1-host2-host3 is displayed in summary information on the IBM MQ queue manager instance dashboard in the Instana UI.
  • Host-level correlation is removed due to the aggregation of HA queue managers, so host-based filters no longer work. Use entity.ibmmq.qm.activeNode:* to search for HA queue managers.
  • Set the availability zone in the ibmmq plug-in section in the agent configuration.yaml file instead of the host section because the queue manager correlation with the original single host is removed. If the zone is set in the host part, the queue manager is displayed in an undefined zone after the HA support is enabled.
  • The infrastructure link between the Instana IBM MQ sensor and IBM MQ Tracing in call details continues to work after you configure tracing. For more information, see Troubleshooting.

Enabling the HA support for the queue manager activates monitoring of the following IBM MQ HA environment. The following sections describe how Instana aggregates data and presents it in the Instana UI for each of the following HA environments:

  • RDQM

    • Aggregates data from running and standby queue manager instances.
    • RDQM high availability (RDQM HA): Shows HA Type, HA Role, Preferred Location, Floating IP, Active Node, and Standby Nodes on the dashboard of the running queue manager.
    • RDQM disaster recovery (RDQM DR): Shows DR Role, DR Status, DR Type, DR Port, and DR Remote IP on the dashboard of the running queue manager.

  • Multi-instance queue managers

    • Aggregates data from running, standby, and elsewhere queue manager instances.
    • Displays HA Type, Active Node, Standby Nodes, and Elsewhere Nodes on the dashboard of the running queue manager.

  • Native HA

    • Aggregates data from running and replica queue manager instances.
    • Displays HA Type, Active Node, and Standby Nodes on the dashboard of the running queue manager.

  • Single-instance in Red Hat OCP

    • Monitors the running queue manager instance.
    • Displays HA Type and Active Node on the dashboard of the running queue manager.