Question

We have many communication servers sending data packets. We would like to store these data packets coming from these server programs in MSMQ until an updater will process them. Data loss has been a concern and we would like to not lose any data packet coming from these server programs and want an efficient and performant solution.

What will be the best design approach?

Answer 1

Well, there are two basic things you need to do to get started. First, you’ll want to modify the default installation to move the storage location to a drive that is mirrored and/or is not the same as the one that the operating system boots from on that server. Also you’ll want to ensure there is enough space there to hold messages as they are queued, depending on the volume you’re contemplating. This article covers that.

Second, you’ll want to use transactions and journaling to ensure reliability. This is both a programming and infrastructure issue, so you can start by looking at this article, and then following up with a general guide on how to program against MSMQ correctly. This for example is a good starting point if you’ve never used MSMQ, although it’s fairly basic. If you’re going to use MSMQ as a binding/transport for WCF then you have the plumbing part pretty much covered; it’s just a matter of configuring your services to handle the volume and traffic you think you’re going to see.