Do I need DTC for my SQL Server?

I get a lot of questions about the "best" way to configure the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) for SQL Server on a Windows 2008 cluster. There is no one best way to do it, and the first question you ask should be "do you even use DTC and if so how and how often?". If you don't use DTC or use it rarely, then perhaps you don't need to spend a lot of time coming up with the absolute "best" method for each instance of SQL Server or your application. If your application calls DTC directly or if you use a feature in SQL Server that calls DTC, then you need DTC to be available. Some examples of how SQL Server uses DTC: linked servers, OPENROWSET, OPENQUERY, OPENDATASOURCE, remote procedure calls, BEGIN DISTRIBUTED TRANSACTION, updatable subscriptions for transactional replication (immediate and queued updating are now deprecated). You can choose to enlist in a DTC transaction from CLR, SSIS, and DTS. SQL Server does not support using DTC with some features such as database mirroring.

Read more: Cindy Gross - Troubleshooting, tips, and general advice

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