Upgrade to Biztalk 2006

Upgraded BizTalk Server 2006 and MSMQT adapters...

When you upgrade from BizTalk 2004 to BizTalk 2006, MSMQ adapter is installed by default. If you had MSMQ/T adapter enabled in 2004, it will also be enabled after you upgrade to 2006. You’ll see the MSMQ adapter, but it won’t be doing anything. The adapters don’t conflict with each other and you can have both installed without any problems. The conflict would be between BizTalk with MSMQT and the Windows MSMQ service. As long as the MSMQ service is not running, you will not have problems.

Though MSMQ/T is fully supported in BizTalk 2006, if you want to migrate to MSMQ somtime in future follow the steps mentioned in Migration considerations for moving from MSMQ/T to MSMQ adapter in BizTalk 2006

Upgrade from BTS 2004 to BTS 2006 and SQL Server 2005

In case you are upgrading to BTS2006 from BTS2004 and you want to use SQL Server 2005, you must upgrade BizTalk first and then SQL Server. Just thought it was worth mentioning here...

Unable to read BizTalk events generated prior to upgrade

After you have upgraded from BizTalk 2004 to BizTalk 2006, you will be unable to read the old events generated prior to upgrade in the event viewer. In order to view those events, please follow the instructions below

1. Copy the btsmsg.dll file from the BizTalk 2004 installation CD (For english, you can find it in <CD>\Msi\Program Files\1033).  
2. Copy this dll to the BizTalk Install Folder and rename it to BTSMsg_2004.dll
3. Register this dll using regsvr32 and now, the Voyager event entries are available for viewing.

Note: This file will not be removed when the BizTalk 2006 is uninstalled. Please use /u option in regsvr32.exe to unregister the dll and then remove it from the install location.

Upgrade can be resumed...

So we have been talking about seamless upgrade. Following are the operations setup performs in order to ease the upgrade pain. Basically, the whole process of upgrading from BizTalk Server 2004 to BizTalk Server 2006 is divided in four steps:

1. Checking for the installed pre-requisites required by BizTalk 2006. In case there any of the following is missing we download and install the pre-requisites in the upgrade. The ones that can be downloaded and installed while performing the upgrade are
   1. Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0
   2. Microsoft Data Access Components 2.8
   3. Microsoft SQL XML 3.0 Service Pack 3
   4. Microsoft XML 3.0 Service Pack 7
   5. Microsoft XML 6.0
   6. Microsoft Office Web Components
   7. Microsoft ADO MD.Net 8.0
   8. Microsoft ADO MD.Net 8.0 Patch
   9. Microsoft ADO MD.Net 9.0
2. Upgrading the BizTalk databases
3. Uninstalling the BizTalk 2004 and installing the BizTalk Server 2006
4. Post upgrade configuration to configure the components for BizTalk Server 2006

In case of any unexpected failure while upgrading, we can resume the upgrade from the middle. To consider a scenario, let us say the machine being upgraded goes off the network while upgrading the remote databases. The upgrade can still be resumed from that stage by simply restoring the database that was being upgraded (from its backup) and executing the setup again.

Similarly, in case post upgrade configuration fails because of a similar reason, add a DWORD registry entry RerunUpgrade=1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0_Migrated. The setup can be executed multiple times even after the BizTalk 2006 installation. This enables us to complete the upgrade successfully in case it fails because of some unprecedented scenario.

 

Checklist before performing upgrade from BizTalk Server 2004.

Thought would add a checklist that you need to run through before upgrading from BizTalk 2004.  Though you can find all this in the upgrade guide, I wanted to emphasize on a few things. If you follow upgrade guide religiously, the upgrade experience should be seamless.

 

·         The user performing the upgrade must have the following rights:

·         Administrator on the local machine

·         SQL Server System Administrator rights on the SQL Server

·         BizTalk Server Administrator

·         SSO Administrator

·         The Network Service account must have write access to %windir%\temp.

·         Enterprise Single Sign-On Master Secret Server must be running at the time of upgrade. The SQL Server which hosts the SSO database regardless it is running locally or at remote server at the time of upgrade.

·         IIS 6.0 Common Files component must be installed if you would like to publish BizTalk Web services in BizTalk Server 2006 for the following:

·         IIS Common Files are needed because of the runtime machines which providing the ASP.NET Web services require them.

·         IIS Common Files are needed because of when the administration machines which used to pack BizTalk applications require them to access the IIS metabase on the remote machines if the application contains or references the remote web directories.

·         If you configure all BizTalk Server 2006 databases to be BizTalkMgmtDb except BizTalkEDIDb and SSODB, you will not be able to upgrade to later version. Build to build upgrade on consolidated databases is not supported.

·         SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services client tools must be installed on the computer in order to perform the upgrade on Analysis Service databases.

·         In SQL Server Analysis Services 2000, dimension level can reference alias called "Error" or "Name". Yet, in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, these words are reserved words. The upgrade may fail if custom BAM views on OLAP cubes are deployed. To work around this, modify the Alias name in Excel or the Name attribute of that Alias element in Xml before the upgrade.

·         If you have BizTalk Server 2004 version of MQSeries Adapter and MSMQ Adapter installed on the machine, export the binding and then uninstall them before the upgrade.

·         If you are upgrading Business Activity Services, it is recommended that you synchronize the BAS site with the TPM database before you upgrade. For more information about running the Sync command, see "How to Synchronize BAS Data" in BizTalk Server 2004 Help.

·         A BAM Data Transformation Services (DTS) package must not be running when upgrade is performed, otherwise there may be loss of data or corruption of a cube.

 

 

Migration Paths for BizTalk Server

BizTalk Server 2006 Upgrade

Its been 2 months now and had been postponing this but now BizTalk 2006 RC is about to release and I presume there will be people upgrading from BizTalk 2004 or BizTalk 2006 Beta2. So here it is, a blog for BizTalk Upgrade, finally joining the list of Microsoft bloggers to pass on general tips, tricks and advice for upgrade related issues.