BUG: SQL Mail may not be fully supported for use with virtual SQL Servers

SQL Mail may fail to work at all or after a cluster failover has occurred.

Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) is not cluster-aware.

To use SQL Mail with SQL Server 2000 failover clustering, consider the following:

• An instance of SQL Server 2000 must run on the same Microsoft Windows NT/2000 account on all failover cluster nodes in order for SQL Mail to possibly work on failover clusters.
• Each failover cluster node must have a MAPI profile with an identical name and settings.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 2000.

SQL Mail is not fully supportable when used on a SQL Server failover cluster due to the MAPI limitation of not being cluster-aware.

For alerting functions, use another monitoring tool such as System Monitor that is running on another computer.

For additional information, refer to the following subjects in SQL Server 2000 Books Online:

• Configuring Mail Profiles
• SQL Mail

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: