WebSphere MQ – Manage Your Entire WMQ Environment from a Single Point of Control
What may have seemed like something you could do only in your dreams is a reality. AutoPilot M6 for WebSphere MQ manages the performance and availability of your entire WebSphere MQ environment from a single point of control. AutoPilot for WebSphere MQ deals with every aspect of WMQ management.
WebSphere MQ Administration
AutoPilot oversees administration tasks including creating, starting, altering, viewing, stopping, and deleting such things as clusters, processes and WebSphere MQ objects (queue managers, queues, namelists, process definitions, channels, client connection channels, listeners, services, and authentication information objects). AutoPilot can perform this task both locally and remotely.
Configuration Management
AutoPilot uses its own embedded Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for WebSphere MQ to accomplish full 360o management capabilities. AutoPilot for WMQ automatically discovers all the queue managers and MQ objects. It can create, change, delete and clone MQ objects. It centralizes the configuration management database. It monitors object changes and makes rolling back to a previous configuration simple. It maintains a centralized and consistent interface across all platforms and various WebSphere MQ versions.
All of this is data is maintained in an easily accessible SQL database. The primary advantage of AutoPilot’s design is the way it allows IT personnel to store configuration changes and also follow an audit trail. AutoPilot is also designed to complement the capabilities of other CMDB tools already in the system.
Performance and Availability Monitoring
AutoPilot monitors WebSphere MQ operations. Is WMQ performing properly? Is there unidentified down time? Are all transactions flowing through at the correct speed?
AutoPilot uses a complex event processing (CEP) engine to deliver comprehensive fault management. But more than this, AutoPilot is proactive. It scans for abnormally processed transactions. When an impending problem is detected, proactive alarms are triggered. This gives IT the data needed to take proactive action. No longer do IT staff have to wait for systems to break down. Problems can be resolved before they impact customers.
Business Transaction Monitoring
In addition to the middleware messages it handles, AutoPilot also monitors transactions. There are more than one type of transaction because there are at least two types of transactions common to business—IT transactions and business transactions. It can take hundreds of IT transactions to make up one business transaction.
Message Tracking
Knowing where MQ message interfaces have occurred, which messages were handled and where they were sent is central to managing the WebSphere MQ environment. AutoPilot offers dependable message tracking and auditing. It also provides point-in-time recovery capabilities while generating detailed reports that provide real-time visibility into all WMQ messaging within the enterprise.
Capacity Planning
AutoPilot allows IT developers to evaluate the existing WebSphere MQ version’s performance capabilities. This makes designing and sizing WMQ configurations more efficient.
Operational Monitoring
AutoPilot centralizes control of the entire WebSphere MQ environment. If your system already has HP Operations Center enterprise, AutoPilot makes that platform even more useful. AutoPilot WMQ SPI provides real-time access to consolidated, high-level views into the overall health of your WMQ environment. At the same time, it delivers deeply granular drill-down insight on demand into WebSphere-integrated application process layers.
Message Management Facility
AutoPilot offers two versions of its Message Management facility (MMF). One is integrated with the APWMQ console. The other is a web version. Both allow users to view, move, delete and edit messages. Users can also auto format message content based on their own user-defined structures. Re-routing and the dead letter queue (DLQ) can be managed from one central location. The Message Management Facility makes finding messages anywhere in the WMQ network a quick and easy task.
This facility is used by both the middleware team and development. The middleware team could use these when they receive odd messages. The test group within development can use the MMF to move a message that is preventing an application from reading a queue into a different queue for triage. Developers could use this facility to make copies of messages for replaying, to make changes to the messages that might test different paths, and other actions to help them in their development process.
Command Line Interface
AutoPilot is designed for use with many different operating systems including Linux-based WebSphere MQ enterprise systems. Linux-users will be comfortable with the command line interface
Security
AutoPilot provides via integration with Kerberos and Windows AD for user authentication. This MQ doctor provides strong granular authorization control, ensuring that your IT environment remains safe.
AutoPilot M6 for WebSphere MQ is one application performance management tool worth considering for any business looking for a solution that provides not only WMQ monitoring but also a full-spectrum solution for managing all applications and business transaction processes used within the business.
About the Author
About the Author: Denise Rutledge enjoys researching and writing about technology products. She writes on many financial and business topics, including software solutions that impact business performance in the financial industry. Denise works with clients to develop website content, with a focus on writing materials that develop brand and trust through valuable, easy to read information.
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