Recently, I faced some of the issues below when configuring BizTalk Disaster Recovery at one of my customers. The BizTalk solution was implemented on HyperV and since earlier clustering was not supported for SQL 2005 (BTW, it is supported now), we had to separate the Message Box database and the Management, SSO & Tracking databases to ensure better solution performance. The overall configuration looked as below –

Due to this configuration, there were some minor complications that kicked in when setting up the backup jobs.

When configuring BizTalk with the above topology, the BizTalk configuration will create a SQL Linked Server between the Management database and the Message Box database. The backup jobs resides on the management database and the linked server is supposed to help communication with message box server and facilitate the backups.

• When we first started with testing the backups job, we ran into the following issue –
  • <Msgbox DB Server Name> is not configured for RPC. SQLSTATE 42000. Error 7411

  As the error message points out, the first suspect is usually to check if the RPC service is working on the message box SQL Server. If BizTalk is performing its required tasks, then chances are that the issue is elsewhere. Since DTC requires RPC. And BizTalk cannot live without DTC.

  The second step is to check the Linked Server properties and ensure that the "RPC Out" property is enabled. Enabling this allows RPC communication between the servers.

• Secondly, if both the SQL Servers are configured to use different service accounts, make sure that both the service accounts should have access to the network share that creates the backup and log files. In the above case, the service account that was configured for the message box server did not had access to the network share. The BizTalk backup job in turn "instructs" the message box database server to perform the backup. Hence, the actual writing of the backup file happens with the SQL service account configured on the message box server. If you do not have this setup right, chances are that you will see the familiar "Access is denied" error message and the Backup job will fail.

Hopefully these experiences might save some time the next time you run into this configuration.

--Sanket