Now that the basics of MSDTC have been covered in Part 1 we can move on to troubleshooting more specific issues. Here I cover other tricks that can ruin your day. There was a period of time where it felt like all I did was diagnose and fix MSDTC issues. This is the outcome of that frustration – a guide that you may find helpful and prevent the stress I experienced. So without further ado…
If you haven’t worked with MSDTC before you might mistake it for a simple straight forward service which is easy to setup, configure, and troubleshoot. I too once thought that until I stumbled into the thick forest of MSDTC with those promises and didn’t return for years all grizzly and worn (ok it wasn’t that bad).
What comes next is my contribution to those who follow into the dark denizens of MSDTC hoping to fix things so they can go home.
Diagnostics and the optimization of configurations are important for any SQL Server instance. However, it is not only the database server which need attention. The operating system, Windows Server, needs consideration as well. There are various general configurations to consider optimizing on any Windows Server hosting a SQL Server instance.
NOTE: this deals only with Windows Server. I know that Linux is now recently an option but this article will deal only with Windows Server.
This is part 2 of a 3 part series about SQL Server Environmental Diagnostics. Part 1 can be read here.