IBM MQ metrics

The OpenTelemetry Collector, when configured with a Prometheus receiver, provides an integration with IBM MQ to ingest metrics. The Collector fetches metrics from the configured path in the IBM MQ configuration file and sends it to the Prometheus exporter. From there the metrics are received and processed by the Prometheus receiver and exported to Cloud Observability.

To complete the integration, you will:

  • Configure IBM MQ to use the Prometheus exporter.
  • Configure the Collector to use the IBM MQ endpoint as a scrape target for the Prometheus receiver.
  • Enable the integration by adding it to a pipeline

Prerequisites

  • A running instance of IBM MQ v8.0 or later
  • You’ve configured the Collector to export metric data to Cloud Observability.

Configure IBM MQ reporting

You need to configure IBM MQ to use the Prometheus exporter.

The port for IBM MQ Prometheus monitoring (9157 by default) can be toggled with the environmental variable:

MQ_ENABLE_METRICS=true

For more details about using IBM MQ with the Prometheus exporter, see the official IBM MQ documentation.

Configure the Collector receiver

In the Collector configuration file, configure the Prometheus receiver to use the IBM MQ endpoint as a scrape target.

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receivers:
  prometheus/ibmmq:
  config:
    scrape_configs:
    - job_name: 'ibmq-scraper'
      scrape_interval: 5s
      metrics_path: "/metrics"
      static_configs:
      - targets: [":9157"]

The targets field must be the same as the default port for IBM MQ :9157.

The OpenTelemetry repo’s readme provides additional details about Prometheus receiver configuration.

Enable the Collector receiver

Once the IBM MQ receiver is configured, enable it by adding it to one or more pipelines as described in the Collector configuration documentation.

Validate metrics are reporting to Cloud Observability

You can validate that metrics are reporting to Cloud Observability on the Metrics details page in Settings.

  1. In Cloud Observability, click Settings > Metric details.

  2. Search for IBM MQ metric names. Arrow points to the metrics search box.

  3. If needed, click on the metric to edit the description and how the units are displayed in Cloud Observability.

Create a dashboard for the metrics

Use the Cloud Observability Terraform Provider to create a dashboard for the metrics.

Additional resources

For a more complete example that’s ready to run, see the IBM MQ integration in Cloud Observability OpenTelemetry Examples.

See also

Create and manage dashboards

Create alerts

Updated Dec 1, 2022