[z/OS][V9.1.1 Nov 2018]

New IBM MQ 9.1.1 features for z/OS

On the z/OS® platform, IBM® MQ 9.1.1 delivers a number of new features that are available with base and advanced entitlement.

Support for using client connections with IBM z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition

The MQ Service Provider for IBM z/OS Connect EE now supports client connections to both remote and local z/OS queue managers. This allows more flexible deployments as the queue manager and IBM z/OS Connect EE server do not need to be running on the same LPAR.

For more information, see Connection modes.

Addition of ANY_TLS12 CipherSpec

From IBM MQ 9.1.1, you can add a new CipherSpec, ANY_TLS12, to message channel agent channels, MQI, Java and .NET clients, and cluster channels to allow the use of any supported TLS 1.2 cipher. This means that you can:
  • Configure TLS channel security without needing to know a long complicated IBM MQ specific CipherSpec string.
  • Adapt without any configuration change to use new ciphers, and handle deprecation of weak ciphers. This feature is particularly useful within clusters.
For more information, see SSLCIPH, and Migrating existing security configurations to use the ANY_TLS12 CipherSpec.
Attention: ANY_TLS12 does not guarantee that a specific CipherSpec will be used on a running channel, only that the negotiated CipherSpec is enabled and acceptable to IBM MQ on both ends of the channel. To request that a specific CipherSpec is used by a channel, you must specify that specific value on both ends of the channel.

[V9.1.4 Dec 2019]From IBM MQ 9.1.4, IBM MQ provides an expanded set of alias CipherSpecs, adding to the existing ANY_TLS12 (available since IBM MQ 9.1.1). These alias CipherSpecs include ANY_TLS12_OR_HIGHER, and ANY_TLS13_OR_HIGHER among others, and are provided for ease of configuration and future migration. They are described in Enabling CipherSpecs. (For a list of these CipherSpecs, see the Alias CipherSpecs section in Table 1.)

SECPROT attribute available on z/OS

From IBM MQ 9.1.1, the SECPROT (MQIACH_SECURITY_PROTOCOL) attribute, which displays the security protocol currently in use, is available on z/OS.

For more information, see DISPLAY CHSTATUS.

IBM MQ message-driven bean pause in WebSphere Liberty

From IBM MQ 9.1.1, the maxSequentialDeliveryFailures activation specification property defines the maximum number of sequential message delivery failures to a message-driven bean (MDB) instance that the resource adapter tolerates, before pausing the MDB.

For more information, see IBM MQ message-driven bean pause in WebSphere® Liberty.