Tech Corner: Behind the Scenes of the ClearPath OS 2200 QProcessor
By Diane Schaefer, Senior Software Engineer, Unisys TCIS

The WebSphere MQ product has been available running on the OS 2200 operating environment for a long time. It is just one of many options ClearPath customers have to integrate applications and data within their IT infrastructure and across to other systems.

In May 2009, we introduced a new specialty engine — the OS 2200 QProcessor — plus the availability of WebSphere MQ version 6.0 for ClearPath Dorado Servers. The OS 2200 QProcessor is dedicated to WebSphere MQ processing with tight OS 2200 integration and running under the control of the OS 2200 environment. Shipments of WebSphere version 6.0 and the OS 2200 QProcessor started on September 25, 2009. Please note that the OS 2200 QProcessor is supported on the ClearPath Dorado 4000 Series, Dorado 300 Series, and Dorado 700 Series.

With WebSphere MQ version 6.0 come a number of important new features, including:

• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support, which provides an added measure of security.
• The introduction of WebSphere MQ Publish/Subscribe capability, which eliminates any need for your OS 2200-based applications to “know” anything about the target applications with which they are exchanging messages. With this new feature, information is sent to a standard destination managed by MQ Publish/Subscribe, which handles further distribution.
• A new clustering feature that enables a group of queue managers to communicate directly with one another over a single network — without the need for a transmission queue, channel, or remote queue definitions.

This latest version of WebSphere MQ is available only via the OS 2200 QProcessor, which is specially engineered to integrate seamlessly with your OS 2200 environment and meet your high expectations in the areas of security, performance, and reliability (more about this later.)

With the OS 2200 QProcessor, you are able to continue to use the following: existing MQSeries version 5.2 (a.k.a. MQS2200) applications without relinking, the UNX processor for management of queues and the environment, and the WMQ2200 daemon for life cycle management and debugging. As in previous versions, WebSphere MQ is integrated with Open Distributed Transaction Processing (TM2200) so that your OS 2200 database updates and WebSphere MQ messaging are all completed within global transactions. The difference is that the actual processing of messages is done on the OS 2200 QProcessor. This greatly reduces the footprint of WMQ2200 in terms of Dorado system IP, SUP, and CPU resources. In addition, running WebSphere MQ on the OS 2200 QProcessor allows OS 2200 applications to take advantage of 64-bit threading of queue managers, plus the new version 6.0 features I highlighted above. Finally, this approach simplifies the software release process, which allows us to get new WebSphere MQ releases and functionality to you faster.

Let’s take a look “behind the scenes” at how the OS 2200 QProcessor is engineered and review what it takes to migrate to WebSphere MQ version 6.0 running on this specialty engine.

Robust Technology Delivers High Availability

The OS 2200 QProcessor specialty engine runs under the control of the OS 2200 operating environment and comprises both hardware and software elements — some designed and developed by Unisys and others selected from the best industry-standard solutions on the market.

Special care has been taken to ensure the highest levels of reliability and serviceability for the OS 2200 QProcessor specialty engine, including selection of a best-in-class Intel® platform and making the entire unit field replaceable to improve service quality and timeliness.

Ensuring the highest levels of availability is always a primary driver of our engineering efforts and the OS 2200 QProcessor is no exception, featuring:

• Redundant NIC ports
• Redundant switches for its private internal LAN
• The ability to enable resilient IPs on the OS 2200 operating environment

In addition, there are two storage options that allow you to align the OS 2200 QProcessor implementation with your own backup and recovery needs:

• Three on-board SATA one-terabyte hard drives
• — Two RAID 10 drives for MQ logs and operating system software
• — One non-RAID drive for the /var/mqm file system
• Customer-provided external storage, which can be used to store the WebSphere MQ file systems or to back up log and data files

We’ve enabled disk mirroring for the OS 2200 QProcessor, thus providing seamless recovery from a disk failure.

Finally, you have the option to configure a second, redundant OS 2200 QProcessor as a “standby” for primary OS 2200 QProcessor operations. This provides the ability to recover and restart the WebSphere MQ environment in the event of a failure. The primary system’s IP addresses are enabled on the secondary system and access to the OS 2200 QProcessor is restarted from the WMQ2200 daemon. If you keep your WebSphere MQ data and logs on the internal disks, the physical disks can easily be moved to the standby system if necessary. If you use the optional external disk subsystems, then the disk subsystems simply need to be mounted on the secondary system to continue processing. In the future, we plan to implement a heartbeat check and automated failover between the two OS 2200 QProcessors.

The OS 2200 QProcessor software environment includes:

• A specially adapted graphical user interface (GUI) Administration Console
• WebSphere® MQ version 6.0 for ClearPath OS 2200
• Interconnect, Unisys developed software that provides communication between the OS 2200 partition and specialty engine.

The entire environment has been configured for optimal WebSphere MQ operations.

ClearPath Strength Security

Security is built into the very foundation of every ClearPath server — and that’s also the case for the OS 2200 QProcessor specialty engine. Its security follows the very same standards as ClearPath OS 2200 systems, was designed by Unisys ClearPath security experts, and is built into the specialty engine firmware.

Let me review some of the major things we’ve done in the way of security:

• The operating environment on the OS 2200 QProcessor is configured out-of-the-box to maximize security, while allowing required access and flexibility. For example:
• — Installation and configuration are limited to only those software elements that are necessary to support the MQ environment. This minimizes possible security and stability problems that might come from software that is not intended to be executed.
• — Network services are limited to only those required for necessary functionality, which greatly reduces opportunities for the system security to be maliciously targeted. For example, the device has no email or HTTP interface.
• — Root access is tightly controlled and limited to only a restricted-access local console.
• The OS 2200 QProcessor is connected to the ClearPath Dorado host and Operations Server via its own private LAN — making it impossible for any network-based attack to directly affect host-to-specialty-engine traffic. We recommend that the private LAN be made physically secure by locating it within the confines of your data center.
• The Interconnect software can be (optionally) set to only accept incoming connections from specific OS 2200 hosts.
• Public access to the specialty engine is further protected by a firewall, which is pre-configured such that most of the ports on the public adapter are closed by default.

Configuration and management of the OS 2200 QProcessor is tightly controlled via a web-based Administration Console, which can only be accessed from Operations Server and your internal LAN. Each user must be registered before access is granted and default passwords must be changed the first time new users log in and are subject to similarly strict guidelines as those used in your OS 2200 operating environment.

Simplified and Integrated Management Capabilities

A new GUI-based Administration Console is now available with the OS 2200 QProcessor. Designed for ease-of-use, it supports remote, web-based operations across a secure, private LAN between the OS 2200 QProcessor and a Microsoft® Windows® system, such as the Service Processor.

The Administration Console gives you the ability to remotely perform a wide range of management and administrative functions for the OS 2200 QProcessor, including:

• Boot up and shut down
• Backup and restore
• Firewall configuration
• Software package management
• Dump and log management
• IP address and password set up
• Managing MQ queue managers and WebSphere MQ logs
• Viewing MQ error logs directly in the web browser

In addition, customers using ClearPath Operations Server will see that it’s simple to oversee the specialty engine from this console as client software running on the OS 2200 QProcessor monitors the platform and passes alerts over to Operations Server when needed.

Back Up and Restore

The Administration Console allows you to back up and restore data from the OS 2200 QProcessor to your OS 2200 system. Several backup profiles that back up state and network configuration information are provided by default. The backup and restore feature uses OS 2200 CIFS shares and the OS 2200 Interconnect product provides a background run that helps to process backup and restore requests from the device.

Migrating to WebSphere MQ version 6.0 and the OS 2200 QProcessor

Migration to the OS 2200 QProcessor and WebSphere MQ version 6.0 for ClearPath Dorado Servers is straightforward. The first step is to install the new WMQ2200 product and OS 2200 QProcessor specialty engine on your Dorado server. Using the Queue “load” and “unload” utility (IBM support Pack MO03), MQS2200 userids and groups can be easily migrated to the OS 2200 QProcessor. In addition, we supply scripts to migrate all queue manager objects, messages, and other related items to the OS 2200 QProcessor. Once all the items have been migrated, a simple “recover and restart” of the queue managers is all that’s needed to continue processing. The elapsed time for the migration of objects, messages, and so on, will vary depending on the volume of messages in your queues at the time of migration — but should be less than an hour in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Getting Started with OS 2200 QProcessor

To learn more about the OS 2200 QProcessor, visit the WebSphere MQ section of the eCommunity to see presentation materials and the specification sheet.

If you have any questions about this article, send me a note.