Run IBM MQ in Docker for local development

In a previous blogpost, I described how you can install IBM MQ on your local development machine. This is still a lot of work just to get MQ up and running…

This post describes how to run IBM MQ in Docker and get you up and running in less than 5 minutes! (you should have of course already a working installation of Docker Desktop on your machine)

The official GitHub repository of the MQ Container can be found here: https://github.com/ibm-messaging/mq-container.

Step 1 - Run MQ with default config

These instructions are based on the official usage documentation. In this example, I will not use the default MQ_DEV config.

# get image
docker pull ibmcom/mq

# create volume to sore settings and messages
docker volume create qm1data

# run container without default mq_dev config and attach the new volume
docker run --env LICENSE=accept --env MQ_QMGR_NAME=QM1 --env MQ_DEV=false --publish 1414:1414 --publish 9443:9443 --detach --volume qm1data:/mnt/mqm ibmcom/mq

# login to web console
https://localhost:9443/
u:admin	
p:passw0rd

Step 2 - Disable security

The default configuration has security configured out of the box. And that is a good thing! But it might be a bit annoying for local development.

Connect to your container using the cli. Use runmqsc to disable security and create a new channel that runs under the mqm user.

runmqsc

ALTER QMGR CHLAUTH (DISABLED)
ALTER QMGR CONNAUTH(' ')
REFRESH SECURITY TYPE(CONNAUTH)
define channel(DEMO.ADMIN.SVRCONN) chltype(SVRCONN) trptype(TCP) mcauser('mqm')

At this point, security is disabled and the channel “DEMO.ADMIN.SVRCONN” can be used for messaging (from Java / .NET) and admin purposes (MQ Explorer) without any security.

DISCLAIMER: you should only disable security like this in a development scenario!