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| brianb |
 Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 4:25 pm Post subject: If you could start over |
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Voyager
Joined: 12 May 2010
Posts: 85
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Just looking for comments personal opinions etc
If you had a new MQ infrastructure and knowing what you know today would you institute clustering ? Is it really worth the effort to administer and maintain multiple clusters ? From my own experience I have found that clustering from an Admin perspective not an application/programming perspective introduces many gotcha' to the Admin that do not exist in a distributed environment. Cluster issues tend to be severe and downtime from say a simple deletion can cause havoc to your MQ network. Not saying you should or shouldn't use clustering just if you could do it all again would you 
Thanks
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| PeterPotkay |
| Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Poobah
Joined: 15 May 2001
Posts: 7722
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If you need workload balancing, you use clustering.
If you have a very dynamic system where things are changing all the time and you have lots of QMs all talking to each other and you would benefit from the reduced administration, you use clustering.
If you truly need multiple clusters, do it, but not if a single cluster will do.
Although MQ clustering is cool, don't use MQ clustering just because its cool.
Even though MQ clustering is much better than it was in the ol' days (pre 5.3.0.5 or so), I would not use an MQ Cluster if my technical requirements didn't justify it.
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On |
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| Vitor |
| Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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Grand High Poobah
Joined: 11 Nov 2005
Posts: 26093
Location: Texas, USA
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Clustering is essential if you need workload balancing.
Clustering tends to have fewer gotchas than a point to point network.
Clustering is very useful if you have a large number of queue managers, or there's a serious risk you'll end up with a large number of queue managers. Try dealing with a change of IP address when the queue manager has 20 channels....
There have been many discussions on the forum on the benefits & dangers of multiple & overlapping clusters. Personally I don't like overlap & find it a pain.
A simple deletion shouldn't cause havoc unless you're deleting a queue manager without removing from the cluster(s) it's a member of. That's not a gotcha, that's not following the requirements of the software.
In summary I prefer clusters over point to point but wouldn't use one blindly.
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Honesty is the best policy.
Insanity is the best defence. |
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| gbaddeley |
| Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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Jedi Knight
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 2538
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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If I could start over, I would:
- Ensure all MQ systems that join clusters are on a decent FixPack / CSD level.
- Never allow developers to join their qmgrs into a cluster or issue cluster channel or cluster refersh commands (should be an MQ admin job)
- Never allow developers to move queues in and out of clusters (but altering put/get enable/disable is ok)
- Enforce rigid naming standards for clusters and cluster channels in the enterprise. Never allow duplicate qmgr names.
- Maintain definitive diagrams of all MQ clusters (eg. Visio, Power Point)
- Don't use MQ clusters for inter-enterprise messaging or long hauls (eg. international)
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Glenn |
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| fatherjack |
| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 6:42 am Post subject: |
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Knight
Joined: 14 Apr 2010
Posts: 522
Location: Craggy Island
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I think the 'reduced admin' thing is a bit over-egged.
I think clusters can potentially make troubleshooting a tad more tricky.
And you need to make sure you do security properly.
But if you need to do load balancing clusters are a pretty darn good way of doing it.
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Never let the facts get in the way of a good theory. |
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| sumit |
| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 7:55 am Post subject: Re: If you could start over |
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Partisan
Joined: 19 Jan 2006
Posts: 398
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| brianb wrote: |
| If you had a new MQ infrastructure and knowing what you know today would you institute clustering ? |
That depends on how simple/complex/small/big the architecture is/will be and what are your further requirements. Do you need loadbalancing or not, do you expect the architecture to expand in future, etc.
| brianb wrote: |
| Is it really worth the effort to administer and maintain multiple clusters ? |
With that, do you mean overlapped clusters or multiple disjoint clusters?
| brianb wrote: |
| From my own experience I have found that clustering from an Admin perspective not an application/programming perspective introduces many gotcha' to the Admin that do not exist in a distributed environment. |
A cluster created and maintained as per documented procedure is much stable.
Sometimes it does happen that an admin managing a distributed config for years is asked to manage a clustered env. But isn't that natural!
However, at times you need to spend good amount of time to resolve a problem in cluster env because some something was done without following proper procedure.
| PeterPotkay wrote: |
| Although MQ clustering is cool, don't use MQ clustering just because its cool. |
Well said 
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Regards
Sumit |
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| mqjeff |
| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:46 am Post subject: |
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Grand Master
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 17447
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If I were to start over with any given MQ architecture, I'd spend a good bit of time up front designing the security model and ensuring that the final design matches and enforces the security model.
I'd leave use of clusters as a secondary consideration based on where load balancing actually has to happen - and possibly use overlapped clusters to enable tighter security controls. |
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