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MQ Containers

Use the following steps to verify and test your entitlement to pull IBM MQ certified containers from the IBM Cloud Container Registry.

If you do not have an Entitlement key or if it fails to pull the IBM MQ docker image, please contact your IBM representative.

  1. Ensure Docker is installed and running in the local workstation.

  2. Log into My IBM Container Software Library with the IBM ID and password that are associated with the entitled software.

  3. In the Entitlement keys section, select Copy key to copy the entitlement key to the clipboard.

  4. Log into IBM Cloud Container Registry by running the following command. Replace <MY_ENTITLEMENT_KEY> with your key. A message Login Succeeded should be displayed if authentication is succeful.

    docker login cp.icr.io --username cp --password <MY_ENTITLEMENT_KEY>

  5. Pull the IBM MQ docker image.

    docker pull cp.icr.io/cp/ibm-mqadvanced-server:9.4.3.0-r2

    The following output should be displayed:

    9.4.3.0-r2: Pulling from cp/ibm-mqadvanced-server
    (...)
    Status: Downloaded newer image for cp.icr.io/cp/ibm-mqadvanced-server:9.4.3.0-r2
    cp.icr.io/cp/ibm-mqadvanced-server:9.4.3.0-r2

  6. Verify the IBM MQ image. The image must be listed.

    docker images cp.icr.io/cp/ibm-mqadvanced-server

IBM MQ containers on AKS and EKS

IBM MQ containers are not limited to OpenShift deployments.
They are also fully supported and production-ready on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

This extended support allows organizations to deploy IBM MQ in a broader range of managed Kubernetes environments, enabling greater flexibility when designing cloud-native architectures.
The same operational capabilities, container images, and configuration principles apply across OCP, EKS, and AKS, ensuring consistent behaviour regardless of the chosen platform.

IBM MQ containers on OpenShift

Cúram does not require or support the use of any IBM MQ Advanced features available in the IBM MQ certified containers.

IBM MQ certified container is supported only from Cúram Version 7.0.11 and later versions.

Note: The IBM MQ charts found in the Runbook Github repository are sample charts based on the IBM MQ public charts published in the IBM MQ charts.

Operators

MQ can also be deployed via Operators. Operators are a method of packaging and deploying Kubernetes applications that take human operational knowledge of managing the application and encode it into the package itself, which can then be shared with users. Operator deployment can be used to create a single-instance or a multi-instance deployment, as desired. The IBM MQ Operator can be installed using the Operator Hub. More information on installing the IBM Operator using the OpenShift CLI can be found in the OpenShift Cli documentation. When deploying in this way, a Queue Manager object is created.

MQ Operators used in Cúram requires the values for availabilityType, storageType, and storageClassName to be configured prior to deployment. These values are those located under the MQ global.mq section within the relevant values file.

MQ File Systems Consideration

IBM MQ provides guidance on the functional capabilities for a file system and the testing a user should complete in their own environment.

For more information, please see the following documentation on IBM MQ multi-instance queue manager file systems, IBM MQ considerations for EFS on AWS and Red Hat OpenShift support for AWS EFS.

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