IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Agent in Container

Overview

IBM MQ Managed File Transfer transfers files between systems in a managed and auditable way, regardless of file size or the operating systems used. You can use Managed File Transfer to build a customized, scalable, and automated solution that enables you to manage, trust, and secure file transfers. Managed File Transfer eliminates costly redundancies, lowers maintenance costs, and maximizes your existing IT investments.

This image allows you to run IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Agent in a container. The container image can be run using podman or docker runtimes or can be deployed in an OpenShift Cluster via a Deployment yaml. With this container image, you can run both standard and protocol bridge type of agents. The protocol bridge agent supports connections to FTP and SFTP servers.

See here for an earlier implementation of MFT on cloud.

What is new in IBM MQ MFT Agent Container 9.4.1.0?

This version of the container image has the following updates:

• Built using the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer 9.4.1.0 LTS Redistributable binaries.
• Container image is built using ubi9 minimal RedHat Linux image as the base image.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

Earlier versions of container images

IBM MQ 9.4.0.0?

This version of the container image has the following updates:

• Built using the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer 9.4.0.0 LTS Redistributable binaries.
• Container image is built using ubi9 minimal RedHat Linux image as the base image.
• The bridge agent now supports usage of SSH Private Keys for connecting to SFTP Servers. The SSH private key and host key must be Base 64 encoded. SSH Private key can be supplied through an OpenShift configMap or a secret. See here for more details.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

MQ 9.3.5.0

• Container image built with 9.3.5.0 CD of IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Redistributable Image.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

MQ 9.3.4.0

• Container image built with 9.3.4.0 CD of IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Redistributable Image.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

MQ 9.3.3.0

• Container image built with 9.3.3.0 CD of IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Redistributable Image.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

MQ 9.3.2.0

• Container image built with 9.3.2.0 CD of IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Redistributable Image.
• Fixes issues found in internal testing and by customers.

MQ 9.3.1.0 This version of container image supports TLS secure connections to queue managers. You can now specify cipherspec environment variables as described below. The public keys must be mounted into the container at a specific path. See here for more details.

Developer image

Developer version of the MFT Agent container image is available in IBM Container Registry (icr.io/ibm-messaging/mqmft). Use podman/docker command to pull the image.

podman pull icr.io/ibm-messaging/mqmft

Usage

See here for details on how to run the image container with Podman runtime.

See here for details on how to deploy the image in an OpenShift Container Platform.

Note that in order to use the image, it is necessary to accept the terms of the IBM MQ license.

Environment variables supported by this image

• LICENSE - Required. Set this to accept to agree to the MQ Advanced for Developers license. If you wish to see the license you can set this to view.
• MFT_AGENT_CONFIG_FILE - Required. Path of the json file containing information required for setting up an agent. The path must be on a mount point. For example a configMap on OpenShift. See the agent configuration doc for a detailed description of attributes.
• MFT_AGENT_NAME - Required. Name of the agent to configure.
• BFG_JVM_PROPERTIES - Optional - Any JVM property that needs to be set when running agent JVM.
• MFT_LOG_LEVEL - Optional - Level of information displayed. info and verbose are the supported values with info being default. Contents of agent's output0.log is displayed if MFT_LOG_LEVEL is set to verbose.
• MFT_AGENT_START_WAIT_TIME - Optionl. An agent might take some time to start after fteStartAgent command is issued. This is the time, in seconds, the containor will wait for an agent to start. If an agent does not within the specified wait time, the container will end.
• MFT_MOUNT_PATH - Optional. Environment variable pointing to path from where agent will read files or write to.
• MFT_COORD_QMGR_CIPHER - Name of the CipherSpec to be used for securely connecting to coordination queue manager.
• MFT_CMD_QMGR_CIPHER - Name of the CipherSpec to be used for securely connecting to command queue manager.
• MFT_AGENT_QMGR_CIPHER -Name of the CipherSpec to be used for securely connecting to agent queue manager.

Location of agent configuration files

Agent in the container will create agent configuration and log files under the fixed directory /mnt/mftdata. This folder can be on a persistent volume as well, in which case the volume must be mounted as /mnt/mftdata mount point in to the container

Building your own container image

See the instructions here to build your own agent container image.

Lab

Step-by-step guide to using agent container.

Issues and contributions

For issues relating specifically to the container image, please use the GitHub issue tracker. If you do submit a Pull Request related to this container image, please indicate in the Pull Request that you accept and agree to be bound by the terms of the IBM Contributor License Agreement.

Known issues

When using secure connections to queue manager, agent running in a container may log the following warning messages to console or agent's output0.log. Container will continue to run though.

[11/07/2022 07:32:16:099 GMT] 00000022 FileSystemPre W   Could not lock User prefs.  Unix error code 2.
[11/07/2022 07:32:16:100 GMT] 00000022 FileSystemPre W   Couldn't flush user prefs: java.util.prefs.BackingStoreException: Couldn't get file lock.

Do the following to resolve the warnings:

1. Include the following environment variable in your deployment yaml if you are deploying in OpenShift Container Platform

- name: BFG_JVM_PROPERTIES
  value: -Djava.util.prefs.systemRoot=/jprefs/.java/.systemPrefs -Djava.util.prefs.userRoot=/jprefs/.java/.userPrefs

2. Include the following environemt variable while running podman/docker runtime:

  --env BFG_JVM_PROPERTIES=-Djava.util.prefs.systemRoot=/jprefs/.java/.systemPrefs -Djava.util.prefs.userRoot=/jprefs/.java/.userPrefs

For issues relating specifically to the container image, please use the GitHub issue tracker. If you do submit a Pull Request related to this container image, please indicate in the Pull Request that you accept and agree to be bound by the terms of the IBM Contributor License Agreement.

Licenses

The Dockerfiles and associated code and scripts are licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Licenses for the products installed within the images are as follows:

• IBM MQ Advanced for Developers (International License Agreement for Non-Warranted Programs). This license may be viewed from an image using the LICENSE=view environment variable as described above or by following the link above.
• IBM MQ Advanced (International Program License Agreement). This license may be viewed from an image using the LICENSE=view environment variable as described above or by following the link above.

Note: The IBM MQ Advanced for Developers license does not permit further distribution and the terms restrict usage to a developer machine.

Copyright

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2020, 2024