Plan to migrate IBM MQ to a later version on Windows

Before migrating IBM MQ to a later version on Windows, review the system requirements information, and the information about any changes that might affect migration, then create a migration plan.

Before starting

If there are concepts about migration we do not understand, see Migration concepts and methods.

If we are migrating to Version 9.2 from Version 7.5 or earlier, we must first migrate to an interim version. See Migration paths.

About this task

Use the following steps as a guide to creating a migration plan.

Procedure

1. Review the IBM MQ system requirements for the later version of the product.

   See System Requirements for IBM MQ.

2. Decide whether to run the earlier version and the later version of the product on the same server, and also which migration method we want to use.

   Choices are single-stage migration, side-by-side migration, or multi-stage migration. See Migration methods on IBM MQ for Multiplatforms.

3. Review all the changes in IBM MQ that affect you.

   See Changes that affect migration.

4. Review performance changes.

   See MQ Performance documents.

5. Review the readme file for the later version of IBM MQ.

   See IBM MQ, WebSphere MQ, and MQSeries product readmes.

6. Plan the sequence and timing of queue manager migrations.
   • If the queue manager is part of a queue manager cluster, we must migrate the queue managers that are full repositories first.
   • If the queue manager is part of a high availability cluster, plan the migration to minimize downtime and maximize availability; see Migrating a queue manager in a high-availability configuration.

7. Plan to migrate your queue manager to the later version.

   See Migrating a queue manager to a later version on Windows.

   Backing up queue manager data is part of the queue manager migration task. An alternative approach is to install and configure a new server, then test the later version with a new queue manager on the new server. When we are ready to go into production on the later version, copy the queue manager configuration and data to the new server.

8. Plan to update any manual or automated procedures you have written with changes to messages and codes.

   From Version 9.1, a suffix letter, indicating the severity of a message (I, W, E, S or T) is appended to IBM MQ diagnostic (AMQ) messages. Existing scripts looking for error codes without the severity will fail. For example, existing scripts looking for error matching to AMQ7468 will fail. We must update the scripts to look for error codes with the severity suffix added (for example, AMQ7468I). For more information, see IBM MQ messages on Multiplatforms.

9. Decide on what regression tests to perform before putting the queue manager into production on the later version. Include in your regression tests the procedures and applications you identified in previous steps.
10. Plan to migrate the IBM MQ MQI client installations to the later version.
11. Plan to migrate your client and server applications to use new functions in the later version.

• Migration considerations for Version 8.0 or later on Windows
  From Version 8.0, a number of changes were made for IBM MQ for Windows. We must understand these changes before planning any migration tasks for Version 8.0 or later on Windows.
• Program and data directory locations on Windows
  The installation location for IBM MQ program binary and data files on Windows depends on the IBM MQ version we are installing, and whether this is the first time IBM MQ is being installed.

Parent topic: Migrating IBM MQ on Windows