How to install and to configure Message Queuing on a Windows 2000 cluster

This article describes how to install and to configure Microsoft Message Queuing (also known as MSMQ) on a Microsoft Windows 2000 cluster.

Before you configure Message Queuing on a Windows 2000 cluster server, follow these preliminary steps:

1. Make sure that the Windows 2000 cluster service is installed and functioning correctly.
2. On the computer node that hosts the cluster virtual server, run Comclust.exe. This is located in the Winnt\System32 folder.
3. Run Comclust.exe on the other nodes. Do not restart any node until Comclust.exe has been successfully run on all nodes in the server cluster.
4. Restart each node of the cluster.
5. Install Message Queuing on every node of the cluster. On nodes that are also domain controllers, do not install routing support. Do not cluster Message Queuing on a domain controller.

To configure Message Queuing resources for server clusters, follow these steps:

1. On the computer that owns the cluster, click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Cluster Administrator.
2. Click the Groups folder.
3. In the details pane, click the cluster group to which you want resources for Message Queuing to belong.
4. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Resource.
5. In the New Resource wizard, create a resource for Message Queuing, and type the appropriate information in Name and Description. In Resource Type, select Message Queuing, and then click Next.
   
   Note The name that you select here is reflected in the Service Control Manager. For example, if you select ClusteredMSMQ as the name in the Service Control Manager, the clustered Message Queuing instance will appear as MSMQ$ClusteredMSMQ.
6. On the Possible Owners page, click Add to add nodes shown in Available Nodes to Possible Owners, and then click Next.
7. On the Dependencies page, click Network Name under Available Resources, click Disk, and then click Add. When you are finished, click Finish.
8. Click the Resources folder. In the details pane, click the resource that you just created. On the File menu, click Bring Online.

To create new queues, view messages in existing queues, or perform any other administrative tasks on a newly created resource, follow these steps:

1. To create another resource, repeat steps 2 through 4 of the previous procedure.
2. In the New Resource wizard, select Generic Application in Resource.
3. On the Possible Owners page, make sure that all the nodes in the cluster are listed under Possible Owners.
4. On the Dependencies page, select Network Name as a dependency.
5. On the Generic Application Parameters page, type cmd.exe in the Command line, and then in the Current Directory line, type C:\WINNT\System32 (where C:\WINNT is the directory where Windows is installed).
6. Click to select the Allow application to interact with desktop check box, click to select the Use Network Name for computer name check box, and then click Next.
7. On the Registry Replication page, do not add any registry keys. Click Finish.
8. Click the Resources folder. In the Details pane, click the resource that you just created. On the File menu, click Bring Online.

Note You can use the generic application that is configured by these steps to configure and administer the virtual server. From this command prompt, you can start any of the MMC snap-ins. You must start the Computer Management snap-in from this command prompt to administer the virtual servers instance of Message Queuing.

This command prompt will not appear if you are logged on through Terminal Services. To work around this, log on to the console session. You can do this by using the /console switch. You can also use the Mmcv.exe utility. For more information about how to use the Mmcv.exe utility, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: You can also use this generic application to start a custom MMC console that contains all the snap-ins that are required to administer the virtual server.

Additional notes

• These tasks are performed one time on a computer that is part of a server cluster. The steps in this article may be performed multiple times if Message Queuing is to be in an active-active configuration.
• All Message Queuing applications that run in the context of a cluster group (are cluster-aware) depend on the Network Name resource and the resource you create for Message Queuing.
• Do not rename resources for Message Queuing after they have been created.
• If you install Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 before you cluster Message Queuing, you must add the RequireKerberos property to the network name resource that Message Queuing depends on. You cannot bring the Message Queuing resource online if you have not completed this. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  235529  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235529/ ) Kerberos support on Windows 2000-based server clusters

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: You can also see Windows 2000 Help and the Windows 2000 Readme.doc file.