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HTTP/HTTPS Messaging in Server Clusters

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

HTTP/HTTPS messaging in server clusters

This section applies only to users running Windows Server 2008 or later in a failover clustering configuration. To implement Message Queuing in a server cluster, the same Message Queuing features are enabled on each node of the server cluster. This means that if you enable the HTTP Support feature for Message Queuing on one node, you must enable the HTTP Support feature for Message Queuing on all other nodes.

When you enable the HTTP Support feature for Message Queuing on a cluster node, IIS will also be installed on that node, if it is not already installed. You then define cluster groups for Message Queuing, and create a virtual server - a cluster group that will contain the Message Queuing resource, plus other resources upon which the Message Queuing resource depends. For further information, see Message Queuing in Server Clusters. Each virtual server is associated with a network name and an IP address. To support these virtual servers, IIS must assign a Web site for all virtual server IP addresses. To do this, configure the default Web site setting to All Unassigned, which assigns to the default Web site all IP addresses that are not assigned to a specific site. Alternatively, you can specify the IP address of a particular virtual server as the default Web site.

Note

Message Queuing uses DNS reverse lookup to route HTTP messages to a cluster virtual server. Therefore, DNS should be configured for reverse lookup for both IPv4 and IPv6 to ensure HTTP messages are routed correctly. For more information about configuring reverse lookup for DNS see the Windows Server TechCenter.

Failover for the Message Queuing resource with HTTP

If the IIS service on the cluster node goes down, this does not cause the Message Queuing cluster group to fail over. This means that in such a case the Message Queuing resource will continue to work on the node, but HTTP messaging cannot be used. Because of this limitation, if your business needs dictate that you maintain high availability for the HTTP Support feature of Message Queuing; configure a separate web farm implementation for HTTP/HTTPS messaging. For more information see HTTP/HTTPS Messaging in Network Load Balancing Clusters.