DTC Transaction Manager on a Windows Server Cluster
Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server Technical Preview, Windows Vista
The DTC transaction manager, DTC proxy, and Component Services administrative tool are always installed on each node of a Windows 2000 Server cluster as part of Windows 2000 Server setup.
The Cluster Administrator administrative tool in Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and subsequent versions, provide additional support for adding and configuring a Microsoft DTC resource on a cluster. Before this release, administrators added a DTC resource to a cluster by executing the comclust.exe program on each node in a cluster. However, this can become unwieldy as the number of nodes in a cluster increases over time.
The Cluster Administrator tool provides the following advantages to DTC administrators:
You can add a DTC resource to all cluster nodes from a single location, eliminating the need to execute the comclust program on every node in the cluster.
You can perform all configuration tasks for a DTC resource through a single tool instead of through multiple tools.
You can use the same user interface that you use to configure other cluster resources, such as Message Queuing or Microsoft SQL Server.
DTC configuration information is automatically propagated to the new node when the cluster service is started on that node.
Note
When you need to set up the cluster node as a component load-balancing server and add a DTC resource to the cluster, it is still necessary to execute the comclust program on that node. The comclust program does not allow you to choose a cluster group for the DTC resource that you are adding to the cluster. Instead, it finds the first cluster group that contains the correct resource dependencies and assigns the DTC resource to that group. When using the comclust program, you must execute the program on every node in the cluster.
See the following topics in this section for detailed information about administering the DTC on a Windows server cluster: