What's new in IBM MQ for z/OS 9.3.0 - Advanced and Advanced VUE entitlement

IBM® MQ for z/OS® 9.3.0 delivers a number of new features and enhancements that are available with Advanced or IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition entitlement.

IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement

The following capabilities are new for Long Term Support at IBM MQ 9.3.0.

IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition features now available with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement

[MQ 9.3.4 Oct 2023] These capabilities are also available for Continuous Delivery from IBM MQ 9.3.4. For more information, see What's new in IBM MQ 9.3.4 for z/OS - Advanced and Advanced VUE entitlement.

Managed File Transfer

The following capabilities first appeared in IBM MQ 9.2.x Continuous Delivery releases and are new for Long Term Support at IBM MQ 9.3.0:

Guidance for use of Managed File Transfer on z/OS
Redistributable Managed File Transfer Logger
Limiting the number of file transfers for each FTP endpoint
New Managed File Transfer commands for starting and stopping resource monitors
Enhanced credentials protection for Managed File Transfer
Improvements to the fteRAS command
Transfer logging on Managed File Transfer

The following capabilities are new for Long Term Support and Continuous Delivery at IBM MQ 9.3.0:

Enable MQCSP support by default for Managed File Transfer commands
The REST API and managed calls for Managed File Transfer

IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS Value Unit Edition features now available with IBM MQ Advanced for z/OS entitlement

Customers 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 entitlement. Including:

The Connector Pack component, which provides the IBM Aspera® faspio Gateway, which can improve the speed of transfer of IBM MQ data in lossy, high latency, networks.

Managed File Transfer enhancements

Guidance for use of Managed File Transfer on z/OS

This is a documentation only enhancement.

On z/OS, Managed File Transfer supports transfer of data to and from files and data sets. A wide range of data set types and characteristics are supported, but Transferring between data sets on z/OS describes some restrictions that apply. See the section on Partitioned data sets (PDS) and partitioned data set extended (PDSE) data sets for more detailed information. Using Managed File Transfer in combination with z/OS utilities to transfer files gives additional guidance by describing methods that can be used to transfer data sets for which Managed File Transfer has restrictions.

To ensure that Managed File Transfer makes full use of the resilience capabilities of IBM MQ on z/OS, additional guidance has been provided within IBM Documentation to help you configure Managed File Transfer to use queue-sharing groups. For more information, see Planning your MFT infrastructure with IBM MQ for z/OS queue sharing groups.

Redistributable Managed File Transfer Logger

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, the Redistributable Managed File Transfer package includes the Managed File Transfer Logger component, enabling you to optionally copy published information about actions for analysis and auditing purposes. The logger supports FILE type loggers connecting in client mode to the coordination queue manager. For more information, see Downloading and configuring Redistributable Managed File Transfer components.

Limiting the number of file transfers for each FTP endpoint

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, enhancements to the Managed File Transfer protocol bridge agent enable you to choose to limit file transfers per File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Secure FTP (SFTP) endpoint to reduce the risk of bottlenecks and effectively prioritize file transfers. You can limit the number of file transfers for each FTP endpoint by using the additional attributes of maxActiveDestinationTransfers (at both the global and individual server level) and failTransferWhenCapacityReached. For more information, see Scenarios and examples for limiting the number of file transfers to individual file servers and Protocol bridge properties file format for details of the additional attributes.

New Managed File Transfer commands for starting and stopping resource monitors

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, two new commands, fteStartMonitor and fteStopMonitor, allow you to start and stop resource monitors without needing to stop or restart an agent. This is useful, for example, in the following situations:

If an agent has multiple resource monitors, and only some of them have encountered errors but the remaining resource monitors are still working fine so you just want to restart the failed resource monitors.
If you want to stop a resource monitor to carry out some maintenance work, or if the resource monitor is not required for certain time and you do not want it to run unnecessarily, thus consuming precious system resources.

For more information, see Starting an MFT resource monitor and Stopping an MFT resource monitor.

Enhanced credentials protection for Managed File Transfer

At IBM MQ 9.2.0, the fteObfuscate command was enhanced to encrypt and decrypt credentials with a stronger algorithm and a user supplied key. From IBM MQ 9.3.0, the command has an additional protection mode that provides MD5 hashing and encryption of credentials using the latest algorithm and a user specified key to encrypt. For more information, see fteObfuscate and Improvements to Managed File Transfer security from IBM MQ 9.2

Attention: Managed File Transfer will still be able to use any existing stored credentials from a previous release. Migration of credentials to use the new encryption algorithm is not automatic. To enhance the security in your enterprise, you need to re-encrypt the credentials using the fteObfuscate command with the additional option on the protection mode parameter.

Improvements to the fteRAS command

IBM MQ 9.3.0 improves the output of information to the console so that you can see the progress of the command while it runs. For more information, see fteRAS.

The enhancements to the output of the fteRAS command include subscription logging. For an example of the enhanced output, see fteRAS.

Transfer logging on Managed File Transfer

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, transfer logging is available on MFT for enhanced visibility of file transfer status. More information is provided about the activities of MFT agents, including details of both successful transfers and any failure cases. Transfer logs can assist users in resolving common problems and can also be used to supply more detailed diagnostics if required by IBM support.

A LogTransfer option has been added to the fteSetAgentLogLevel command and the MFT agent.properties file. For more information, see the fteSetAgentLogLevel command and The MFT agent.properties file.

Note: The LogTransfer option cannot be used with either the LogAgent or LogMonitor options.

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, a new log file transferlog0.json is also available. For more information, see Output produced by the LogTransfer function.

Enable MQCSP support by default for Managed File Transfer commands

From IBM MQ 9.3 onwards Managed File Transfer commands that connect to an agent, command, or coordination queue manager use the MQCSP structure by default so that you can use passwords longer than 12 characters. Also, an additional option has been added to these commands for backward compatibility, for example, when connecting to a version of IBM MQ prior to version 8.

See Which MFT commands and processes connect to which queue manager for a list of the commands affected by the change.

As the changes are the same for each command, select the link to any one of these commands to see the additions.

The REST API and managed calls for Managed File Transfer

IBM MQ 9.3 introduces Version 3 of the REST API which includes the HTTP GET and HTTP POST verbs for use with managed calls.

See Using the REST API with managed calls for more information and links to the new verbs.