Chapter 2. Enhancements

This section describes a highlighted set of enhancements and new features in AMQ Broker 7.8. For a complete list of enhancements in the release, see AMQ Broker 7.8.0 Enhancements.

New version of AMQ Management Console
AMQ Broker 7.8 includes a new version of AMQ Management Console. For more information on using the console, see Using AMQ Management Console in Managing AMQ Broker.
New database certifications
AMQ Broker 7.8 adds support for PostgreSQL 11.5 and MySQL 8. For complete information about the databases supported by different versions of AMQ Broker, see Red Hat AMQ 7 Supported Configurations.
Federating address and queues
In AMQ Broker 7.8 you can configure federation of addresses and queues. Federation enables transmission of messages between brokers, without requiring the brokers to be in a common cluster. For example, federation is suitable for reliably sending messages from one cluster to another. This transmission might be across a Wide Area Network (WAN), Regions of a cloud infrastructure, or over the Internet. For more information, see Federating addresses and queues in Configuring AMQ Broker.
Disabling queues
In AMQ Broker 7.8, you can disable queues that you have defined in your broker configuration. For example, you might want to define a queue so that clients can subscribe to it, but you are not ready to use the queue for message routing. Alternatively, you might want to stop message flow to a queue, but still keep clients bound to the queue. In these cases, you can disable the queue. For more information, see Disabling queues in Configuring AMQ Broker.
Performance improvements for vertical scaling of queues
AMQ Broker 7.8 adds scalability improvements that improve broker performance when a deployment automatically scales to large numbers of queues. This improvement applies to all supported protocols, but is particularly beneficial for MQTT, which is often used in large-scale deployments. This performance enhancement is most noticeable for broker deployments with very large numbers of queues, for example, 50,000 or more.
Updating running Operator-based broker deployments with address settings
In AMQ Broker 7.8, you can now add address settings to an Operator-based broker deployment that is already running. Support for including address settings in the Custom Resource (CR) instance for a broker deployment was added in AMQ Broker 7.7. However, in 7.7, you needed to configure the address settings when creating the broker deployment for the first time. For more information on configuring addresses, queues, and address settings, see Configuring addresses and queues for Operator-based broker deployments in Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift.
Additions to the base audit logger
The base audit logger now logs when you pause and resume addresses. To learn how to configure logging, see Logging in Configuring AMQ Broker.
New metric for broker address memory usage percentage
In 7.8, the Prometheus metrics plugin for AMQ Broker exports a new metric named artemis_address_memory_usage_percentage. This metric is the total address memory used by all addresses on a broker as a percentage of the value of the global-max-size parameter. To learn how to configure the Prometheus metrics plugin, see Monitoring broker runtime metrics in Managing AMQ Broker.
Improved configuration of diverts
In 7.8, if you use AMQ Management Console or the management API to configure a runtime divert on a live broker, the divert is automatically propagated to the backup broker. This was not the case in previous releases.
Specifying a custom Init Container image
The latest version of the Operator for 7.8 uses a specialized container called an Init Container to generate the broker configuration. By default, the Operator uses a built-in Init Container image. However, you can also specify a custom Init Container image that modifies or adds to the configuration created by the built-in Init Container. For more information, see Specifying a custom Init Container image in Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift..
Operator support for multiple container platforms

In 7.8, the AMQ Broker Operator supports the following container platforms:

  • OpenShift Container Platform
  • OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Z
  • OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Power Systems

Operator support for OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Power Systems is new in 7.8. A version of the Operator for AMQ Broker 7.5 supports OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Z.

In 7.5, you need to install and deploy a separate version of the Operator for each supported platform. In 7.8, you need to install only a single version, which supports all three container platforms. Based on the container platform that you are using, the Operator automatically chooses a broker container image to use in your deployment.

To learn how to install the latest version of the Operator, see the following sections in Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift:

Automatic selection of broker container image by Operator
In the latest version of the Operator for 7.8, when you use a Custom Resource (CR) instance to create a broker deployment, you no longer need to explicitly specify a broker container image name in the CR. Instead, when you deploy the CR, the Operator automatically determines the appropriate broker container image to use. This also applies to the Init Container that generates the broker configuration. To learn more, see How the Operator chooses container images in Deploying AMQ Broker on OpenShift.
RHEL 8 Operator

An Operator named Red Hat Integration - AMQ Broker for RHEL 8 (Multiarch) is available on x86_64 platforms, IBM Z, and IBM Power Systems. It supports the following channels:

  • 7.x - This channel will update to 7.9 when available.
  • 7.8.x - This is the Long Term Support (LTS) channel.

To determine which Operator to choose, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Container Compatibility Matrix.

Operator channels

In the latest version of the Operator for 7.8, the following new update channels are available for the Red Hat Integration - AMQ Broker Operator`:

  • 7.x - This is equivalant to the current channel which is now deprecated.
  • 7.8.x - This is the Long Term Support (LTS) channel.
Operator versioning
In the latest version of the Operator for 7.8, Operators now adopt the same versioning scheme as AMQ Broker. For example, the previous Operator release on x86_64 platforms was version 0.19 in OperatorHub, that version is updated to 7.8.2-opr-1.
Documentation updates
The AMQ Broker documentation is updated to provide instructions regarding the new Operators and channels and support for IBM Z and IBM Power Systems.

Additional resources