Overview of IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor editions

Virtual systems and clouds

A cloud contains virtual systems that are delivered as services. You create a cloud by deploying virtual systems. Virtual systems are composed of hypervisors, and virtual machine images that contain an operating system and any number of applications; see Figure 1.

IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor Edition contains virtual machine images that you configure to create applications and virtual systems, which you deploy to a cloud.

Hypervisors

Virtual machine images are run by a hypervisor, which virtualizes the hardware and operating system on which it runs. IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor Edition for AIX is run by PowerVM® hypervisor, and IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor Edition for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is run by VMware ESX hypervisor.

A hypervisor divides the physical resources of a server among multiple virtual machines. It manages the state of the virtual machines on a physical machine, dividing the processors, memory, and other resources between the virtual machines. Each virtual machine isolates a running virtual machine image. The image runs securely on the same server as other images, increasing the utilization of the server.

Appliances

IBM Workload Deployer and IBM PureApplication System are known as appliances. They manage virtual systems and clouds.

With an appliance, you install, configure, and deploy virtual machine images and hypervisors that run on one or more servers. Interact with the appliance with a browser, the command interface, or the Representational State Transfer programming interface (REST API) supplied by the appliance.

In an appliance, each virtual machine image is known as a part. You configure and assemble parts into topology patterns. You deploy the patterns as virtual system instances to a cloud group, or to a collection of hypervisors. The appliance maintains a catalog of the topology patterns, virtual machine instances, cloud groups, scripts, virtual machine images, hypervisors, and other resources.

IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor editions

IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor editions contain virtual images, and other resources, which you install onto IBM Workload Deployer and IBM PureApplication System. You can also deploy the virtual image for IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor Edition for Red Hat Enterprise Linux directly into VMware ESX hypervisor.

The virtual images contain the AIX or Linux operating system and a IBM WebSphere MQ installation.

The other resources include a IBM WebSphere MQ basic part, script packages, and a Python script. The Python script loads the IBM WebSphere MQ virtual image and script packages onto an appliance, and creates a default IBM WebSphere MQ virtual system pattern.

Add the IBM WebSphere MQ basic part to the patterns you create, which you deploy to a cloud to create virtual systems. The part creates a queue manager, and other IBM WebSphere MQ objects.

IBM WebSphere MQ Hypervisor editions contains script packages. With the cluster script packages, you can configure a pattern to add or remove a cluster of queue managers. The other script package runs the MQSC command tool. Use this script package to customize patterns containing the IBM WebSphere MQ basic part.