Re-platforming IBM MQ to Amazon MQ

The following procedure shows how you can migrate an IBM MQ to an equivalent Amazon MQ without impacting App 1 or App 2:

1. Create an active/standby broker in us-east-1 and another in us-east-2 named as AMQ_ORANGE and AMQ_APPLE.

2. Create a Network Bridge between 2 brokers by adding a duplex network connector definition to one of the queues:

   <networkConnectors> 
       <networkConnector duplex="true" name="connector_AMQ_ORANGE_to_AMQ_APPLE" uri="masterslave:(ssl://b-d63bcc4d-682b-40a2-8227-31386bcf1e3d-1.mq.us-east-2.amazonaws.com:61617,ssl://b-d63bcc4d-682b-40a2-8227-31386bcf1e3d-2.mq.us-east-2.amazonaws.com:61617)" userName="amqadmin"/> 
   </networkConnectors>
   

   After the reboot of AMQ_ORANGE, there should be a Network Bridge created between both brokers as illustrated below:

   Note

   Steps 1 and 2 can be replicated using a AWS CloudFormation template. For more information about using AWS CloudFormation to set up Amazon MQ brokers, see the Amazon MQ AWS CloudFormation Template Reference.

3. Log in to IBM MQ Queue Manager Host and list the queues/topics definitions. In QM_ORANGE, you can list the queues and topics from IBM MQ using the following command:

   $ sudo dmpmqcfg -m QM_ORANGE -t queue -o 1line | 
       grep -v "SYSTEM" | 
       grep -v "AUTHREC" | 
       grep -v "*" | 
       gawk -F: '{ print $1 }‘
               

   The output:

   DEFINE QREMOTE('Q1') RQMNAME('QM_APPLE') RNAME('Q1') XMITQ('QM_APPLE') REPLACE 
   DEFINE QLOCAL('Q2') DISTL(NO) MAXDEPTH(5000) REPLACE 
   DEFINE QLOCAL('QM_APPLE') GET(DISABLED) MAXDEPTH(5000) USAGE(XMITQ) REPLACE

   In the example above, Q1 is the link to the remote queue, QM_APPLE is the transit queue, and Q2 is the local queue. We only need local queue Q2 for the Amazon MQ setup, which can be defined in the broker configuration as <queue physicalName="Q2"/>

   Q1 is a local queue on QM_APPLE and Q2 is a local queue in QM_ORANGE. You can these resources accordingly in AMQ_APPLE and AMQ_ORANGE by using the following configuration

   <destinations>
       <queue physicalName="localQ1"/>
   </destinations>
   

   Similairly, get the list of queues and topics from QM_APPLE.

4. Manually create a dead letter queue strategy in the AMQ configuration file.

   The defaultdead letter queue in ActiveMQ is called ActiveMQ.DLQ. All un-deliverable messages will get routed to this queue. To streamline this process, you can set up an individualDeadLetterStrategy in the destination policy map of the activemq.xml configuration file, allowing you to specify a specific dead letter queue prefix for a given queue or topic. You can apply this strategy using a wild-card so that all queues can be set up with their own dead-letter queues, as is shown in the example below:

   <broker> 
       <destinationPolicy>
           <policyMap>
               <policyEntries> 
                   <!-- Set the following policy on all queues using the '>' wildcard --> 
                   <policyEntry queue=">"> 
                       <deadLetterStrategy> 
                           <!-- Use the prefix 'DLQ.' for the destination name, and make the DLQ a queue rather than a topic --> 
                           <individualDeadLetterStrategy queuePrefix="DLQ." useQueueForQueueMessages="true"/> 
                       </deadLetterStrategy> 
                   </policyEntry> 
               </policyEntries> 
           </policyMap> 
       </destinationPolicy> 
   </broker>
   

   Note

   Dead-Letter queue expiration - By default, ActiveMQ will never expire messages sent to a Dead-Letter Queue (DLQ). However, beginning with ActiveMQ 5.12, the deadLetterStrategy supports an expiration attribute whose value is given in milliseconds as shown below:

   <broker>    
       <destinationPolicy>
           <policyMap>
               <policyEntries>
                   <policyEntry queue="QueueWhereItIsOkToExpireDLQEntries">
                       <deadLetterStrategy>
                           <.... expiration="300000"/>
                       </deadLetterStrategy>
                   </policyEntry>
               </policyEntries>
           </policyMap>
       </destinationPolicy>
   </broker>
   
   

5. Create local queue Q1 on AMQ_ORANGE and Q2 on AMQ_APPLE as shown in the following: