MSMQ Resilience

Question

I have a requirement for a resilient MSMQ setup on VMWare ESX5. I am aware that we cannot allow the queue storage to be shared as it must be installed on physical disk mount, e.g. it cant be an CIFS or DFS Share. The following constraints apply: We don't use windows clustering We dont't rely on hot standbys

Is there a way I can replicate the queue storage to another platform so that it can assume MSMQ duties on failure of the primary platforms using any method including queue forwarding?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '12 at 12:28

I've heard of people using block level copying of the disk hosting the MSMQ storage folder to another location.
If you do replicate storage to another location then the destination machine has to have the same computer name to be able to load the messages.
Note that MSMQ can need to update several files for message processing so there is always the scenario where the copy is not completely in synch with the original when failure occurs.
If you don't want to invest in hardware solutions then you could design the application to be resiliant. For example, by sending messages to multiple destinations but processing only one message or intercepting processing of the duplicates.

Thanks John, useful to know if not the answer I wanted :-( – Paddy Carroll Nov 27 '12 at 09:39 — Paddy Carroll, Nov 27 '12 at 09:39
Sometimes there isn't a powerful-but-free solution :-) – John Breakwell Nov 28 '12 at 00:07 — John Breakwell, Nov 28 '12 at 00:07

MSMQ Resilience

1 Answers1