Monitoring Message Queuing

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

RMS logging uses Message Queuing to send events to the logging database. Each RMS server in a cluster submits messages to the Message Queuing service. From there, the logging listener service retrieves logging messages from the Message Queuing queue and writes them to the logging database. If your logging database or database server becomes unavailable, or if the logging listener service is stopped, Message Queuing will store the messages in the queue. If you are planning to shut down the logging database or database server, it is recommended that you first shut down the logging listener service on every RMS server in the cluster, and then restart the logging listener service on every RMS server in the cluster after restarting the database or database server.

If the database fails and the logging listener service is still running, the logging listener service will be unable to write logging messages to the database. The logging listener service will move the messages to a “dead letter” Message Queuing queue until the database is available, at which point new logging messages will be written to the database. The messages in the dead letter queue will not be automatically written to the logging database. To view and delete the messages in the dead letter queue, use the following steps:

To view messages in the dead letter queue

  1. Log on to RMS server as local administrator

  2. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Computer Management.

  3. Under Services and Applications, click Message Queuing, and then click Private Queues.

  4. Click drms_logging__deadletter, and then click Queue messages.

  5. Double-click each message to view its properties.

  6. To delete all messages in the queue, right-click the Queue messages queue, select All Tasks, and then click Purge.

In the default configuration, Message Queuing will store all queued messages up to the limit of the free storage space that is on the server. If Message Queuing uses all of the available hard disk space, the RMS server cannot service client requests. To prevent this, use the following steps to limit the amount of disk space that Message Queuing can use for queuing:

To limit the amount of disk space that Message Queuing can use

  1. Log on to RMS server as local administrator

  2. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Computer Management.

  3. Under Services and Applications, click Message Queuing, and then click Private Queues.

  4. Click drms_logging_, and then click Properties.

  5. Select the Limit message storage to (KB) check box, and then type the total size, in kilobytes, of all queue messages that can be stored in the queue.

  6. Repeat step 11 for the drms_logging<your cluster name>deadletter message queue.

If one of the queues becomes full, the messages from RMS will be discarded when they arrive, and Event ID 48 ("Sending the Property Bag to Message Queuing failed.") will be sent to the System Event log.

It is recommended that you configure your system monitoring tools to alert you when this event occurs because it signifies an issue with the logging database.