How to: Recover or Move Notification Services Engine Components

Engine components are the event provider host, generators, and distributors. This topic shows the general procedure for recovering engine components on a server or moving engine components to a new server.

Important

All deployments of Notification Services are unique. If you have engine components on remote servers, use the following procedure as a guideline for developing and testing your own recovery procedure.

Step 1: Restore the files and registry

1. Install Notification Services. For more information, see Installing SQL Server Notification Services.

2. Create any Microsoft Windows accounts required by the Notification Services engine components.

3. Recover all operational files used by the engine components. If you do not have a list of the files and their required locations, you can look in the instance configuration and application definitions. If you do not have this information, you can export an instance configuration file (ICF) and application definition files (ADFs) from the databases. For more information, see Exporting Notification Services Instance and Application Metadata.

4. Register the instance of Notification Services, creating the NS$instanceName Windows service.

   • How to: Register an Instance of Notification Services for Engine Components (SQL Server Management Studio)
   • nscontrol register Command

   Note

   If you host the Notification Services engine in a custom application, do not create the Windows service. For more information, see Hosting the Notification Services Engine.

Step 2: If necessary, update the instance of Notification Services

1. Disable the instance of Notification Services.

2. Update the system name values in the application definition for each application hosted by the instance.

   Each hosted event provider, generator, and distributor has its own system name value.

   In an application definition file (ADF) the system name values can be parameters, such as %SystemName%. In this case, you provide the values when you update the instance of Notification Services.

3. Update the instance of Notification Services to apply the new system name values to the application databases.

   • How to: Update an Instance of Notification Services (SQL Server Management Studio)
   • How to: Update an Instance of Notification Services (Command Prompt)

Step 3: Bring the engine components online

1. Enable the instance of Notification Services.

   • How to: Enable an Instance of Notification Services (SQL Server Management Studio)
   • nscontrol enable Command

2. Start the instance of Notification Services. If using the NS$instanceName Windows service, start the Windows service. If hosting the engine in a custom application, use the custom application to start the instance.

   • How to: Start an Instance of Notification Services (SQL Server Management Studio)
   • How to: Start an Instance of Notification Services (Services Manager)
   • How to: Start an Instance of Notification Services (Command Prompt)

3. Verify the status of the instance of Notification Services.

   • How to: View the Status of a Notification Services Instance (SQL Server Management Studio)
   • nscontrol status Command

Note

After you have verified that all components are running on the correct servers, you can unregister the instance of Notification Services on the old server.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Recover or Move a Single-Server Deployment of Notification Services
How to: Recover or Move Notification Services Client Components
How to: Recover or Move Notification Services Databases

Concepts

Recovering Instances of Notification Services

Other Resources

Administering Notification Services
Managing Instances and Applications How-to Topics (Notification Services)

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance