Messaging engine policy assistance

Messaging engine policy assistance provides guidance about creating and configuring messaging engines in a cluster to provide the behavior you require. Messaging engine policy assistance also automatically creates the associated core group policies and other settings. Messaging engine policy assistance is available when you add a cluster as a bus member, or when you administer a messaging engine in a cluster.

For example, you can create and configure messaging engine policies to provide high availability, scalability, or a combination of the two.

You can select from one of three predefined messaging engine policy types, which support frequently-used cluster configurations. The administrative console displays a diagram of the selected cluster and the effect of the selected messaging engine policy type. If further changes are needed to use the policy successfully, warning triangles are displayed for the components that might cause a problem, and messages that suggest solutions are displayed. The predefined messaging engine policy types are:

High availability. The cluster has a single messaging engine that is configured to fail over to any other server in the cluster.
Scalability. There is one messaging engine for each server in the cluster. Each messaging engine is restricted to a particular server and is not configured to fail over.
High availability and scalability. There is one messaging engine for each server in the cluster. Each messaging engine can fail over to one other server in the cluster. Each server can host up to two messaging engines.

You can also use messaging engine policy assistance to create a custom configuration, where you can control how many messaging engines to create and the messaging engine behavior. The associated core group policies are still automatically created, even though you complete some configuration yourself.

If you do not use messaging engine policy assistance, you must do the following:

Create the messaging engine
Configure a message store for the messaging engine
Create a core group policy for the messaging engine
Configure the core group policy to provide the required messaging engine behavior
Use match criteria to associate the policy with the messaging engine

Unless you are familiar with this procedure and have used it before, it is preferable to use messaging engine policy assistance.