Planning your installation on Windows systems

This topic describes the different methods available to install IBM® WebSphere® MQ on Windows systems and the different installation types.

If you are migrating from an earlier version of IBM WebSphere MQ, see Windows: Planning for migration from IBM WebSphere MQ Version 7.1 to IBM WebSphere MQ Version 7.5 . To modify an existing installation, see Modifying your installation.

Interactive or Non-Interactive installation

IBM WebSphere MQ for Windows is installed using the Microsoft Installer (MSI). You can use the Installation Launchpad to invoke MSI, this process is called an attended or interactive installation. Or, you can invoke MSI directly for a silent installation, without using the IBM WebSphere MQ Installation Launchpad. This means that you can install IBM WebSphere MQ on a system without interaction. This process is called unattended, silent, or non-interactive installation, and is useful for installing IBM WebSphere MQ over a network on a remote system.

For a list of interactive and non-interactive features, see IBM WebSphere MQ features for Windows.

Interactive installation

If you choose an interactive installation, before you install, you must decide what type of installation you require. Table 1 shows the installation types available, and the features that are installed with each option. For the prerequisites required for each feature, see System Requirements for IBM WebSphere MQ .

The installation types are:

Typical installation
Compact installation
Custom Installation

You can also:

Specify the installation location, name, and description.
Have multiple installations on the same computer.

See Choosing a primary installation for important information about these features, including whether to designate your installation as the primary installation.

Table 1. Features installed with each type of interactive installation
Installation type	Server Features installed	Client Features installed	Comments
Typical	Server IBM WebSphere MQ Explorer Development Toolkit Java and .NET Messaging and Web Services	Windows client Development Toolkit Java and .NET Messaging	The default option. Features are installed to default locations with a default installation name. Java and .NET Messaging and Web Services includes WebSphere MQ classes for .NET and support for the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) for use with Microsoft .NET 3.
Compact	Server only	Windows client only	The feature is installed to the default location with a default installation name.
Custom	By default, the following features are preselected: Server IBM WebSphere MQ Explorer Development Toolkit Java and .NET Messaging and Web Services A custom installation can also install: Windows client Client Extended Transaction Support Java Extended Transaction Support Telemetry (MQXR) Service Telemetry Clients	By default, the following features are preselected: Windows client Development Toolkit Java and .NET Messaging and Web Services A custom installation can also install: Telemetry Clients	A server custom installation can be used if you want to install the Windows client from within the server image. All the available features are listed and you can select which ones to install, and where to install them. You can also name and provide a description for the installation. Use a custom installation when you want to specify that the installation is primary. Java and .NET Messaging and Web Services includes WebSphere MQ classes for .NET and support for the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) for use with Microsoft .NET 3 or later.

If Microsoft .NET is not installed before IBM WebSphere MQ and you add it, rerun setmqinst -i -n Installationname if this is a primary installation.

The following table describes which level of .NET is required for which function:

Table 2. Required levels of Microsoft .NET
WebSphere MQ function	.NET version required
WebSphere MQ classes for .NET. For more information, see: Getting started with WebSphere MQ classes for .NET 2	.NET 2
The WebSphere MQ custom channel for WCF. For more information, see: WebSphere MQ custom channel for WCF To build the sample solution files, either the Microsoft .NET 3.5 SDK, or Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is needed. For more information, see: Software requirements for the WCF custom channel for WebSphere MQ	.NET 3.0 or later

For instructions on how to install IBM WebSphere MQ on Windows systems, see Installing WebSphere MQ Server on Windows systems and Installing an IBM WebSphere MQ client on Windows.

Non-interactive installation

If you choose a non-interactive installation the system on which you want to install must be able to access the IBM WebSphere MQ image, or a copy of the files, and you must be able to access the system.

If you are running IBM WebSphere MQ Version 7.5 or later, with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, you must invoke the non-interactive installation from an elevated command prompt. Elevate a command prompt by using a right-click to start the command prompt and choose Run as administrator. If you try to silently install from a non-elevated command prompt, the installation fails with an error of AMQ4353 in the installation log.

There are several ways to invoke MSI:

Using the msiexec command with command-line parameters.
Using the msiexec command with a parameter that specifies a response file. The response file contains the parameters that you normally supply during an interactive installation. See Advanced installation using msiexec.
Use the MQParms command with command-line parameters, a parameter file, or both. The parameter file can contain many more parameters than a response file. See Using the MQParms command.

If the system belongs to a Windows domain you may need a special domain ID for the IBM WebSphere MQ service, see Security considerations when installing WebSphere MQ server on a Windows system for more information.