How to programmatically check if msmq quota exceeded

Question

I would like to programmatically check if the MSMQ quota exceeded. In this way, i could provide a ServicePulse custom check. I noticed that the MSMQ quota mostly exceeds if the transactional dead-letter queue is full of messages. So instead of check the MSMQ quota, another approach could be to check if the dead-letter queue contains any message.

Do you have any suggestions on this topic?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Unfortunately it is not that easy, in order to check the dead letters queues (transactional and non- transactional) you need administrative privileges.

The are some approaches to programmatically check the system status:

• event logs looking for specific error codes: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773583(WS.10).aspx;
• Performance counters to monitor the current queues sizes and comare them with the quota;

in both cases I'd say it is much easier to setup a second process as a watch dog or use a third party tool that does the checks for you.

.m