Administrative Tasks

The typical administrative tasks to be performed depend on the nature of the environment in which you are running Message Queue. The demands of a software development environment in which Message Queue applications are being developed and tested are different from those of a production environment in which such applications are deployed to accomplish useful work. The following sections summarize the typical administrative requirements of these two different types of environment.

Administration in a Development Environment

In a development environment, the emphasis is on flexibility. The Message Queue message service is needed principally for testing applications under development. Administration is generally minimal, with programmers often administering their own systems. Such environments are typically distinguished by the following characteristics:

• Simple startup of brokers for use in testing

• Administered objects instantiated in client code rather than created administratively

• Auto-created destinations

• File-system object store

• File-based persistence

• File-based user repository

• No master broker in multiple-broker clusters

Administration in a Production Environment

In a production environment in which applications must be reliably deployed and run, administration is more important. Administrative tasks to be performed depend on the complexity of the messaging system and of the applications it must support. Such tasks can be classified into two general categories: setup operations and maintenance operations.

Setup Operations

Administrative setup operations in a production environment typically include some or all of the following:

Administrator security

• Setting the password for the default administrative user (admin) (Changing a User’s Password)

• Controlling individual or group access to the administrative connection service (Authorization Rules for Connection Services) and the dead message queue (Authorization Rules for Physical Destinations)

• Regulating administrative group access to a file-based or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user repository (User Groups and Status, Using an LDAP User Repository)

General security

• Managing the contents of a file-based user repository (Using the User Manager Utility) or configuring the broker to use an existing LDAP user repository (Using an LDAP User Repository)

• Controlling the operations that individual users or groups are authorized to perform (User Authorization)

• Setting up encryption services using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) (Message Encryption)

Administered objects

• Setting up and configuring an LDAP object store ( LDAP Server Object Stores)

• Creating connection factories and destinations ( Adding Administered Objects)

Broker clusters

• Creating a cluster configuration file (The Cluster Configuration File)

• Designating a master broker (Managing a Conventional Cluster's Configuration Change Record)

Persistence

• Configuring a broker to use a persistent store (Chapter 8, Configuring Persistence Services).

Memory management

• Setting a destination’s configuration properties to optimize its memory usage (Updating Physical Destination Properties, Chapter 18, Physical Destination Property Reference)

Maintenance Operations

Because application performance, reliability, and security are at a premium in production environments, message service resources must be tightly monitored and controlled through ongoing administrative maintenance operations, including the following:

Broker administration and tuning

• Using broker metrics to tune and reconfigure a broker ( Chapter 14, Analyzing and Tuning a Message Service)

• Managing broker memory resources (Managing Broker System-Wide Memory)

• Creating and managing broker clusters to balance message load (Chapter 10, Configuring and Managing Broker Clusters)

• Recovering failed brokers (Starting Brokers).

Administered objects

• Adjusting connection factory attributes to ensure the correct behavior of client applications (Connection Factory Attributes)

• Monitoring and managing physical destinations ( Configuring and Managing Physical Destinations)

• Controlling user access to destinations ( Authorization Rules for Physical Destinations)

Client management

• Monitoring and managing durable subscriptions (see Managing Durable Subscriptions).

• Monitoring and managing transactions (see Managing Transactions).