Monitoring a multi-instance queue manager

You can create multi-instance queue managers to improve availability and use the IBM MQ Monitoring Agent to monitor these multi-instance queue managers.

Multi-instance queue managers improve availability by automatically switching to a standby server if the active server fails. The active and standby servers are multiple instances of the same queue manager; they share the same queue manager data. When the active instance fails you need to transfer its journal to the standby that takes over so that the queue manager can rebuild its queues. You can create multi-instance queue managers on Windows™, UNIX™, or Linux™ systems. For more detailed information about multi-instance queue managers, see the IBM MQ documentation.

To avoid confusion when multiple monitoring agents and queue managers exist in your environment, add the SET AGENT statement to the mq.cfg file. The SET AGENT statement specifies the middle qualifier of the managed system name, which can distinguish the managed system names for queue managers. For detailed information about this statement, see SET AGENT.

Windows system requirements

To use the IBM MQ Monitoring Agent to monitor multi-instance queue managers on Windows systems, make sure that the following requirements are met in your environment:

  • The DataPath parameter of the multi-instance queue manager is set to a UNC name, for example, \\host1\MQHA\data\QM1.

    The DataPath parameter is in the following path in the registry, where <qm_name> is the name of the multi-instance queue manager:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IBM\MQSeries\CurrentVersion\Configuration\QueueManager\<qm_name>

  • The IBM MQ Monitoring Agent is started by a user account that has access to the shared queue manager data.

    You can specify the user account that is used to start the agent by doing the following steps:

    1. Open the Manage Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Services window.
    2. Right-click the IBM MQ Monitoring Agent instance, and click Change Startup.
    3. In the Service Startup for IBM MQ Monitoring Agent window, select This Account in the Log on As section.
    4. Type the user ID and password of the account that you want to use to start the agent.
    5. Click OK to close the window.

UNIX or Linux system requirements

To use the IBM MQ Monitoring Agent to monitor multi-instance queue managers on UNIX or Linux systems, check the location of the mqs.ini file. If the mqs.ini file is not located in the default location, set the AMQ_MQS_INI_LOCATION parameter in the mq.ini file to the full path of the mqs.ini file that the multi-instance queue manager uses. For example, AMQ_MQS_INI_LOCATION=/user1/mqs.ini. The mq.ini file is located in the ITM_HOME/config directory, where ITM_HOME is the directory where IBM® Tivoli® Monitoring is installed.

IBM MQ installation path requirements

If any of the following cases applies to your environment, you must specify the IBM MQ installation path by adding the KMQ_LATEST_WMQ_INSTALLPATH parameter to the kmqenv file on a Windows system or to the mq.ini file on a UNIX or Linux system:

  • More than one copy of IBM MQ is installed on the system and the latest version of IBM MQ on the system is not a primary installation.
  • Only one copy of IBM MQ is installed and it is not installed in the default directory.

For more information about how to set this parameter, see the configuration section about specifying multiple installation paths of IBM MQ in the IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager Agents for IBM MQ Messaging: Installation and Setup Guide.