When migrating the solution from a single server to a multi-server staging environment, my client experienced problems with MSMQT service instance times running into minutes. We were using an Alteon hardware load balancer, but all the documentation only mentioned using NLB – I could find nothing that confirmed or denied that it was possible to use anything other than NLB. An example of this woolliness is KB 898702 which states you can try using NAT devices but they’re not officially supported.
Anyway, when we installed NLB instead, it worked a treat. And we got this definitive response from PSS:
We support hardware load balancing with the exception:
– We don’t support NAT
– Sticky IP must be implemented
Turns out our hardware load balancer uses NAT internally, so that was presumably our problem. Has anyone successfully used a hardware load balancer with MSMQT? I guess I don’t understand how the BTS app servers could bind to its IP address given it’d be external to them…