A system and method are provided for failover of a Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) server instance in an MOM provider having multiple MOM server instances. In an embodiment, a first server node receives notification that an MOM server instance on a second server node is inoperative. The MOM server instance on the second server node may have one or more associated destinations. In an embodiment, the first server node attempts to obtain a lock for at least a portion of MOM server instance configuration information from a locking service. If the lock is obtained, the first server node may acquire the one or more destinations of the inoperative MOM server instance.