Configure IBM MQ for use with the IBM Cloud Private metering service

Configure IBM MQ for use with the IBM Cloud Private metering service to report and view queue manager startup and usage information.


Before starting

Before configuring the IBM MQ queue managers to use an IBM Cloud Private service, we must have an IBM Cloud account. To create your account, see Sign up for IBM Cloud.


By using the IBM Cloud Private metering service, we can connect your on-premises IBM products to your service instance in IBM Cloud Private and see all the registered products in your organization in a single dashboard.

We can configure and connect your AIX, Linux, and Windows queue managers to your metering service instance and see their startup and usage information. However, on platforms other than Linux Container environments, the data cannot be used in support of Hourly Container-Based pricing licenses.

To record usage data for a monthly VPC license type, instead of the default hourly licensing metric, set the environment variable AMQ_LICENSING_METRIC=VPCMonthlyPeak. This causes the queue manager to upload data relating to monthly VPC license types, instead of the default behavior of uploading data related to hourly container-based licenses.

Use the following attributes with the ReportingService stanza in the qm.ini file:

    APIKeyFile
    Location of the text file with the metering service instance APIKey value.

    CapacityReporting
    Writes error log messages periodically to the AMQERR logs in the following format:
    4/22/2020 01:44:29 PM - Process(1274.1) User(bld-adm) Program(amqmgr0)
Host(8b3b83f2bc7d) Installation(Docker)
VRMF(9.2.0.0)
Time(2020-04-22T13:44:29.295Z)
ArithInsert1(300)
CommentInsert1(8.5)
CommentInsert2(IBM MQ Advanced)
    The information produced by the CapacityReporting attribute is inserted into message AMQ5064, which gives you a better understanding of how much IBM MQ your enterprise is using:

      AMQ5064
      This queue manager has been running for 300 seconds. It is currently running with 8.5 cores. License type is IBM MQ Advanced.

      Severity
      0: Information

      Explanation
      This is an information message for usage tracking.

      Response
      None.

    LicensingGroup
    The billing group that the queue manager belongs to. This affects the way data is grouped in reports generated by the metering service.

    ServiceURL
    The IBM Cloud Private service address.

    ServiceProxy
    The URL and port for the HTTP proxy that can be used if the queue managers do not have direct access to the network that the metering service is running on.

We can see the hosts that your products are installed on, the product versions that we are using and the platforms that they are running on. From the high-level usage metrics that are displayed for each product, we can have an overview of how heavy the workloads are. For IBM MQ, we can see which queue managers are more heavily used and which ones have lighter workloads.

When a queue manager is configured to connect to an instance of the metering service, the following information is reported to IBM Cloud Private:

  • IBM MQ queue manager name
  • IBM MQ queue manager identifier
  • IBM MQ installation root directory
  • IBM MQ installed components (name and version)
  • Host name
  • Host operating system name
  • Host operating system version
  • Virtual Processor Core (VPC) usage information for the IBM MQ queue manager

We can monitor your queue manager VPC usage metrics in your metering service instance dashboard.

Parent topic: Configure IBM MQ


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