Creating a New Farm

 

Applies To: Service Bus for Windows Server 1.0

The Service Bus Configuration Wizard creates a farm and assigns the server on which you have installed the Service Bus 1.0 Beta to the new farm. You are required to run this process only once per farm, before you add nodes to the farm as described in Joining an Existing Farm1 or Managing Farms and Nodes1.

You can create a farm using default values for many of the required settings, or you can add customization to the new farm by specifying different values for those settings.

If an error occurs or you are forced to reboot during the farm creation, the farm management database that is created may be left in a corrupt state. In that case, when you try to join a farm the process may display an error stating that the machine you are trying to add to the farm is not a part of any farm. When you encounter such an error, you must drop the farm management database and recreate it before you can join any new nodes to the farm.

Use Default Settings

The Service Bus Configuration Wizard enables you to create a farm while accepting all defaults. This option is useful when you are configuring a Service Bus farm for evaluation or development. The default settings include accounts and security settings, ports to use, conventions for database naming and settings, and more. Use the following procedure to create a new farm and assign the Service Bus 1.0 server to the farm using the default settings.

1. From the Start menu, click All Programs, and then click Service Bus 1.0. Click Service Bus Configuration to start the Service Bus Configuration Wizard.

   

2. Click Using Default Settings (Recommended). The New Farm Configuration dialog appears.

   

3. In the SQL SERVER INSTANCE text box, the name of the SQL Server instance on the current computer appears by default. To specify a different SQL Server, type the complete name of the SQL Server instance that will host the databases for the farm. For more information about understanding SQL Server requirements, see the SQL Server section in System Requirements2. To verify that the instance name you have entered points to a valid instance, click Test Connection. If the connection is made correctly, a green check mark icon appears next to the button. If an error occurs, a message is displayed in the wizard.

   

   The Advanced Options stack panel enables you to specify additional database-related settings, such as SQL AUTHENTICATION MODE and usage of SSL.

4. Under Configure Service Account, your user ID appears in the USER ID text box to identify the user account under which services run. To change the user ID for the user account, enter a new user ID in the USER ID text box. The user ID must be in the format username@domain-name or domain\user. Then enter the password for that user ID in the PASSWORD text box. The wizard validates the user ID and password combination, and if it finds an error, notifies you to re-enter the user ID and password. The same user credentials are used for Service Bus 1.0 services and Microsoft Azure Service Bus services.

5. Under Certificate Generation Key, enter a key in the first text box, and then re-enter it one more time in the text box under CONFIRM CERTIFICATE GENERATION KEY to confirm the first key you entered. The wizard checks the keys to make sure that they match. If the keys do not match, the wizard notifies you to re-enter the keys. Record the key for future use; you will need to provide it every time you add a computer to this farm. The configuration cmdlets use this key for generating certificates. You can specify a custom certificate with the custom settings option.

6. The Enable firewall rules on this computer check box enables you to indicate whether you are interested in allowing the configuration wizard to create firewall rules. Uncheck this box only if Service Bus clients (your application) will run on the same server as the Service Bus.

7. Click Next. The wizard displays the Summary screen, which lists the values that you have entered along with the default values for the remaining configuration options. The screen also displays the configuration options and values for the farm as a whole and for Service Bus 1.0 individually. The wizard also validates that the configuration values are valid for this computer. With any error, the wizard displays the error page and does not allow you to proceed further. You can either go back to change the configuration that is causing the error or, if possible, fix the error outside the wizard.

   For some errors, it may not be possible to continue with the default configuration. For example, if the default port used for Service Bus 1.0 management is blocked by some application, it may not be possible to get it unblocked. If it is not possible to continue with the default configuration, you must create the new farm with custom settings.

   

   Tip

   If there are any errors that you fix outside the wizard, you can use the re-validate button to validate the configuration again.

   Tip

   If you want to configure using PowerShell, you can generate the script based on the current configuration on this page by clicking the Get PowerShell Commands link.

8. Click Apply to approve the listed options, to create the new farm, and to add the server to the new farm. Click Back to return to the New Farm Configuration page and to change the entries you have made.

Use Custom Settings

To create a new farm using custom settings, do the following:

1. Open the Service Bus Configuration Wizard. Under Create a New Farm, click With Custom Settings.

   Note

   There are several pages in the wizard. You can use the scroll bar on the right side of the wizard to see all the available options.

   

2. Configure the databases required for Service Bus 1.0. The Service Bus requires three databases:

   • Farm management database that contains the farm configuration.

   • Gateway database that contains definitions and information about Service Bus messaging entities (queues and topics).

   • Message container database that contains messages stored in Service Bus messaging entities.

   Tip

   If you plan on using many Service Bus messaging entities (queues and topics), you can create multiple message containers. The Service Bus Configuration Wizard helps you with the first container. To create multiple containers, see the T:Microsoft.ServiceBus.Commands.New-SBMessageContainer PowerShell cmdlet.

   You can specify the SQL Server Instance and database name for each of these databases. In the SQL SERVER INSTANCE text box, the name of the SQL Server instance on the current computer appears by default. To specify a different SQL Server, type the complete name of the SQL Server instance that will host the databases for the farm. The current user must have SysAdmin privileges on this SQL Server instance. For more information about SQL Server requirements, see the “SQL Server” section in System Requirements2. To verify that the instance name you entered points to a valid instance and the specified database name exists, click the Test Connection button to the right of the text box. If the connection is made correctly, a green check mark icon appears next to the button. If an error occurs, place the mouse cursor over the red X in the error message to see the reason for the connection failure.

   

3. Under Configure Service Account, your user ID appears in the USER ID text box to identify the user account under which the services run. To change the user ID for the user account, enter a new user ID in the USER ID text box. The user ID must be in the format username@domain-name or domain\user. Then enter the password for that user ID in the PASSWORD text box. The wizard validates the user ID and password combination and if it finds an error, notifies you to re-enter the user ID and password.

4. Under Configure Certificate, you can specify whether the wizard should generate certificates for you or take certificates that you specify. The wizard generates the certificates by default. In this case, you must specify a certificate generation key. Enter the key in the CERTIFICATE GENERATION KEY text box, and re-enter it in the CONFIRM CERTIFICATE GENERATION KEY text box. The wizard checks the keys to make sure that they match and notifies you to re-enter them if they do not. Record the key for future use because you will need to provide it every time you add a new computer to this Service Bus farm.

   If you clear the Auto-Generate checkbox, the wizard allows you to specify two certificates. These certificates should already be installed on the Local Machine\Personal store. You must also install these certificates on all the computers in the farm. The following certificates are configured:

   • The Service Bus SSL certificate secures HTTPS communications between the Service Bus and clients. Click Browse to select an existing certificate.

   • The Encryption Certificate is used to encrypt all connection strings in the management database and registry. If you need to separate communication encryption from configuration settings, this certificate is required. For more information about certificate requirements, see the “Certificates” section in System Requirements2.

     

5. In Configure Port, you can specify the ports that Service Bus 1.0 uses.

   

6. In the text box under Configure Admin Group, enter the name of a user group for which you want to grant farm administration access. By default, the administrators group is used (BUILTIN\Administrators). Every user in this group has administrative access to the databases that are part of the farm. If this group is local, ensure that the group also exists on all computers in the farm and on the SQL Server instance that you specified earlier.

7. Click Next. The wizard displays the Summary page that lists the values that you have entered along with the default values for the remaining configuration options. The wizard validates the configuration values for this computer. If there is an error, the wizard displays the page with an error message and does not allow you to proceed further. You can either go back to change the configuration that is causing the error or, if possible, fix the error outside the wizard.

   Tip

   If there are errors that you can fix outside the wizard, you can use the re-validate button to validate the configuration.

   Tip

   If you want to configure using PowerShell, you can generate the script based on the current configuration on this page by clicking the PowerShell Commands link.

8. Click Apply to create the new farm, or click Back to return to the Farm Configuration page and change the entries you made. The wizard displays the Configuration progress page that shows the installation progress and the details of the current installation operation in the Details list. If any errors occur during the installation, you can click the View log link to see which installation step caused the error.

   

   Tip

   At the bottom of the Details pane, the Service Bus Configuration Wizard displays the endpoint connection string. Use this connection string in your application and paste it into the application configuration file.