I run an active/passive SQL 2005 cluster (Svc Pk 2, soon 3) on Windows Svr
2003 (Svc Pk 2). Our most recent round of operating system patches seems to
have broken MSDTC, as it was working fine until this last round of patches.
I've had firewall guys looking for dropped packets between the app server in
question and the cluster - to include the IPs and network names of the 2
nodes and they're not finding any dropped packets.

I used two tools I've used previously (DTCTester & DTCPing), and both appear
to indicate RPC binding is successful but a reverse binding in DTC is
failing. I would much appreciate any thoughts someone may have - I've been
looking wothout success. Why would a reverse bind on DTC fail? The
firewall guy indicated bidirectional is in place, however it is only
bidirectional if the app server initiates. I'm not an expert on DTC, but
our current setup was working until the latest operating system patches.

Thanks in advance.

Too little information to tell for certain but since you say this happened
after patching, I'm thinking it may have to do with the changes made to DTC
security in 2003 SP1. You may need to enable the Network Access. See the
following KB's for details.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899191/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817064

"Doug" <nospam (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote