CXOne MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor
Introducing CXOne IBM MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor
Do your systems and processes rely on consistent and reliable availability? Do you need consistent message delivery? Do you need to actively monitor your messaging queues, databases and FTP servers? DeeperThanBlue’s CXOne Systems Monitor keeps an eye on your backend processes and helps you keep your systems running.
What is CXOne IBM MQ Monitor?
CXOne IBM MQ Monitor is a lightweight monitoring solution for IBM MQ environments, providing insights into the health and state of Queue Managers.
Since a Queue Manager’s state often reflects the behaviour and health of its connected applications, MQ Monitor can also offer indirect network and application monitoring within the context of the MQ environment.
What is CXOne Systems Monitor?
CXOne Systems Monitor is an integral part of MQ Monitor offering monitoring capabilities for FTP servers and databases, providing insights into the health and state servers and data storage.
IBM MQ monitoring
IBM MQ is a messaging middleware that enables applications to communicate securely and reliably across different systems, platforms, and networks. It ensures message delivery even in cases of network failures, providing features like message queuing, transaction support, and publish-subscribe messaging. By decoupling application components, IBM MQ enhances scalability, resilience, and fault tolerance in enterprise environments. The core components of IBM MQ include:
- Messages: Collections of data meaningful to participating applications.
- Queues: Objects that store messages.
- Queue Managers: System functions responsible for managing message queues and handling data transfer between queue managers via channels and provide services for applications to connect.
These mechanisms can be leveraged by industries requiring high transactional integrity, such as finance and retail where IBM MQ’s assurance that ‘once, and only once’ message delivery is vital. Visibility of this message delivery is achieved through data logging and statistical information. Therefore, monitoring plays a critical role in these environments.
FTP and Database Support
FTP servers and databases can experience similar connectivity issues as MQ as well as performance-related problems. Systems Monitor works well in supporting integration environments that bridge message-based, file-based and database transfers by including FTP host and DB monitoring.
Systems Monitor for FTP
- Both SFTP and FTPS are supported
- Report on conditions include, but are not limited to:
-
- FTP host down or not reachable
- File age detection
- File count/file depth
- Authentication lockout
Systems Monitor for databases
Can support any databases where JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) drivers/connectors are available, including:
- MySQL
- Apache Derby
- IBM DB2
- PostgreSQL
Why do my systems need monitoring?
If there is a problem with a computer, it doesn’t necessarily proactively tell us what the problem is, and the same can be said about IBM MQ, FTP servers and databases. While real-time logging can reveal errors, these aren’t automatically reported.
Users of any of these services must be assured that processes run consistently and reliably to ensure business continuity, operational stability, and prevent reputational damage. Therefore, performance monitoring is an integral component of a business’s tech infrastructure to provide visibility of system health, as it can:
- Prevent downtime: Real-time monitoring enables early detection of issues such as message congestion, queue manager failures, data availability or data transfer issues, facilitating prompt resolution and minimising downtime.
- Optimise performance: Monitoring tools help identify bottlenecks and optimise resource utilisation, ensuring efficient data and message processing and maintaining high system performance.
- Ensure data integrity: Monitoring guarantees that messages are delivered correctly and servers and data are reachable, maintaining data integrity and reliability.
- Plan scalability: Historical data from monitoring aids in planning future infrastructure expansions to meet growing demands.
How do CXOne MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor help maintain system health?
DeeperThanBlue’s CXOne MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor can run in a High Availability (HA) environment, giving your systems the ability to remain accessible and operational, even when faced with hardware or software failures, network issues or other disruptive events.
They work across MQ connected systems, and systems that rely on databases and file transfers, to detect and report on the following conditions:
- Queue manager down
- Queue full/Queue depth high/other specified Queue event
- Message written to Dead Letter Queue or other specified Backout Queue
- Queue inactive: no input-output activity
- Channel stopped
Alerts and reports are created and automatically distributed by email and as a JIRA ticket through REST API.
REST APIs built into MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor allow the monitoring of multiple instances of the same technology, so a backup version of the instance can be left in standby mode while the primary instance is running. Regular pings between the primary and backup instances allow the monitor to determine system availability and spin up the backup instance from standby to live without human intervention.
This ensures minimal downtime and uninterrupted service.
Why should I choose CXOne MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor?
Lightweight and easy to install
MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor are not resource intensive, and can quickly and easily be deployed on your existing systems.
Cross-platform
MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor runs as service on Windows or as a cron job for Unix.
Flexible
Processes are highly configurable and can support multiple queue managers where required.
Intuitive
Cascading config files are logically classified and are text editable to allow bespoke configuration.
In-flight configuration
Processes can be reconfigured without the need to interrupt system monitoring.
Reporting-reset
After remedial actions, the monitor can be instructed to revalidate on next pass to ensure correctness.
Complex configuration handling
MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor supports and monitors IBM MQ even in complex, resilient configurations like those designed for high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and multi-instance queue manager setups.
Who else uses CXOne IBM Systems Monitor?
We have installed MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor for several clients, including:
- XPO Logistics – in conjunction with Mazda
- Woodside Logistics (Ireland) – in conjunction with BMW
- StoneX Financial Services US and Global
- Greencore Group plc
How much does CXOne IBM MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor cost?
MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor is licensed on the number of environments to be monitored and the size of the systems that it is monitoring. The license is term based and includes services to cover:
- Initial setup and configuration
- Annual helpdesk support (business hours (email) service desk with premium options for extended hours and 24/7 coverage where required)
Keep your messaging systems, servers and databases healthy!
If your processes rely heavily on consistent messaging, talk to us about CXOne IBM MQ Monitor and Systems Monitor, and keep your messaging running.
+44 (0)114 399 2820