What's new in IBM MQ 9.3.4 for z/OS - Advanced and Advanced VUE entitlement

On z/OS®, IBM® MQ 9.3.4 delivers enhancements that are available with Advanced or IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition entitlement.

Administration

Additional capabilities for users with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement
Updated IBM MQ Kafka Connectors with exactly-once support
Option to run fteRAS for specific MFT agents

Additional capabilities for users with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement

From IBM MQ 9.3.4, users with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement gain access to features that were previously only available with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition. These include:

The Connector Pack component, which:
- Provides the IBM MQ Kafka Connector, which allows data to flow between IBM MQ and Kafka topologies. See Kafka Connect scenarios for more information.
- Allows Defining an IBM Aspera® faspio Gateway connection on Linux® or Windows platforms, which can improve the speed of transfer of IBM MQ data in lossy, high latency, networks.
Simpler Managed File Transfer topologies by allowing MFT agent connectivity to remote z/OS queue managers using a client connection.
Support for Using PKCS #11 cryptographic hardware in MQIPT.

Updated IBM MQ Kafka Connectors with exactly-once support

The IBM MQ Kafka Connectors have been upgraded to version 2 which provides exactly-once message delivery. This significant enhancement means that failures in either IBM MQ, the IBM MQ Kafka Connectors or Kafka do not result in duplicate messages in either IBM MQ or Kafka.

For more information, see Exactly once support.

Option to run fteRAS for specific MFT agents

From IBM MQ 9.3.4, you can collect troubleshooting information (MustGather data) for a specific Managed File Transfer (MFT) agent or agents instead of for all agents on the system. You do this by running the fteRAS command with the -agents parameter. For more information, see fteRAS (collect MFT troubleshooting information).

The introduction of the -agents parameter reduces the amount of time that it takes to gather troubleshooting information if the data that you need to investigate a problem is for a specific agent or agents. Before IBM MQ 9.3.4, fteRAS collects the entire data for the Managed File Transfer installation on the system, even if the data needed for investigation is for a specific agent. If there are a large number of Managed File Transfer agents configured on a system, the fteRAS command can take a long time to complete and the large zip files that it outputs take additional time to upload.