Reverting firmware

You can, if instructed, revert to a previous level of firmware.

Note: If you upgrade from a IBM® MQ 9.4.x or earlier release to IBM MQ 10.0, you cannot downgrade to the previous level. You must instead re-initialize the machine at the previous level. For this reason you should take a secure back up of your IBM MQ 9.4.x or earlier version and any queue managers before upgrading to IBM MQ 10.0.
When you upgrade the IBM MQ Appliance firmware, the appliance retains current configuration data. This feature is used to restore the appliance to a known, stable state if required.
  • The previous firmware image and associated configuration data is the secondary installation.
  • The newly installed firmware image and associated configuration data is the primary installation.

When you switch between firmware images, the switch can take some time. During this switch operation, do not power off or restart the appliance.

When you perform the boot switch operation, all system configuration reverts to its state at initial upgrade. Any changes made since the firmware update are lost. Losses include, for example, changes to network configuration or user definitions. If any changes made immediately following the upgrade are the cause of problems (and trigger the rollback), this state should be rectified by the boot switch operation. However, data associated with queue managers is not modified when the boot switch takes place, so, for example, messages are not lost in the rollback, and security certificates and authority records retain any modifications.

You cannot use boot switch to revert if the appliance is part of a high availability group. If you need to switch back to the previous firmware image in this situation, then you should install a specific firmware version rather than using boot switch by following the instructions in Installing new firmware.