Installing IBM MQ on Windows Machine

This guide will take you through the process of downloading IBM MQ Server and installing it on a Windows machine. Screenshots will help you follow along step-by-step.

Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure that:

• You have administrator privileges on your Windows machine.
• You have access to the IBM MQ installation files (available via the IBM website or through your organization's software distribution).

Step 1: Download IBM MQ Server

1. Navigate to the IBM MQ download page:

Visit the official IBM website: IBM MQ Downloads

2. Accept license:

By clicking on "I Agree" available on the bottom of the page.Download shall start automatically.

Step 2: Extract the Installation Files

1. Locate the downloaded file (it should be a ZIP File).
2. Extract the contents of the downloaded archive:

Step 3: Install IBM MQ Server

1. Navigate to the extracted folder and find the IBM MQ.msi file located inside "MQ Server\MSI" folder and copy the path.

1. Copy the path the path to a folder where MQ can create a plain text log file for the installation including the name of the file.
2. Copy the path to the location for the MQ default installation parameters file, called?`Response.ini.

• Open command prompt with admin privileges and edit this command by replacing the example paths with your three file location paths and then run it in your command line:

start /wait msiexec /i "D:\IBM MQ\9.4.0.0-IBM-MQ-Advanced-for-Developers-Win64\MQServer\MSI\IBM MQ.msi" /l*v "C:\Users\Rahul\install.log" /q RESPONSE="D:\IBM MQ\9.4.0.0-IBM-MQ-Advanced-for-Developers-Win64\MQServer\Response.ini" TRANSFORMS="1033.mst" AGREETOLICENSE="yes" ADDLOCAL="Server". Screenshot: [Run as Administrator option]

1. The installation will happen in the background. To track the installation's progress, check the log file you specified.
2. To check if the installation was successful, print the error level in command prompt after the installation is completed: "echo %ERRORLEVEL%"
3. If everything went well, this will return a code 0:

• If you get a different code, and it looks like the installation failed, first check if you ran your command line tool 'as administrator'. If not, open another command line window in 'run as administrator' mode and try the command again.
• When the installation completes successfully, there will be a new icon on your taskbar, as MQ starts automatically after being installed.

• If the silent installation failed, you can install MQ by double-clicking?Setup.exe?in the?MQServer?folder to start the Launchpad that will take you through the installation steps.

1. Accept the license agreement. Screenshot: [IBM MQ Installation Wizard]

Step 4: Create and start a queue manager

The main MQ object that applications are interested in, in point to point messaging, is a queue. Before you can create a queue, you must create a queue manager. The IBM MQ queue manager is the server that hosts the queue.

If you've just installed MQ for the first time, the MQ installation path will be:?C:\Program Files\IBM\MQ.

On your command line, change directories to the bin folder of your MQ installation, for example:

cd "C:\Program Files\IBM\MQ\bin"
        

Now Enter

setmqenv -s
        

You can now issue IBM MQ commands without having to be in the bin folder of your MQ installation.

You can display the MQ Installation and Data paths by running the "display MQ versions" command?dspmqver?on the command line:

dspmqver
        

You should see output like this:

You need a queue in order to start putting and getting your messages. Queues live on queue managers, so you need to create a queue manager first. On your command line, type:

crtmqm QM1
        

You should see output like this:

The queue manager is created but not started. Start your queue manager:

strmqm QM1        

Conclusion

You’ve now successfully installed IBM MQ Server on a Windows machine. If you'd like to explore more, you can start configuring IBM MQ objects like queues, topics, and channels.

In order to connect to this QUEUE you can use IBM MQ Explorer to create and manage queues via GUI.