Technical Weblog of Eric Charran : BizTalk Server

Great Resource on BizTalk 2006 Clustering

echarran — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:46:32 GMT

Here is a great resource on planning your BTS architecture and physical implementation. The following article guides administrators through design, planning and impementation of leveraging clustering at every level within the BTS architecture to provide adequate redundancy to ensure that the BTS operation continues despite hardware failure.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/biztalk/2006/library/bts06clustering/413cc8f4-f343-4c1c-8b79-3b15cb4c101d.mspx?mfr=true

Here is a rip of the distinct recommendations for clustering in this article:

Total number of computers

Number of cluster nodes

Level of fault tolerance

2 (one Windows Server cluster)

This configuration can provide fault tolerance for all BizTalk Server components and dependencies that can be clustered by creating a two node cluster that uses an Active/Active model. One or more BizTalk Hosts and the Enterprise SSO master secret server are configured as cluster resources in the same group on one node. SQL Server is configured as a cluster resource in a different group on the other node. This approach is not recommended for the following reasons:

•	You cannot run the BizTalk Base EDI adapter on a BizTalk server that is running a clustered Enterprise SSO service. Clustering of the BizTalk Base EDI adapter is not supported and running the Base EDI adapter on a server where the Enterprise SSO service is clustered is not supported.
•	If one of the cluster nodes fails then all BizTalk Server components and dependencies will be running on a single cluster node, which will greatly impact available document processing capacity.

2 (one Windows Server cluster)

This configuration is used to provide fault tolerance for SQL Server and the Enterprise SSO master secret server. SQL Server and the Enterprise SSO master secret server are configured as cluster resources on a two node cluster that uses an Active/Passive model. BizTalk Server is installed and configured on a stand-alone computer. This configuration is recommended as the minimum number of computers to provide fault tolerance in a BizTalk Server environment. This configuration does not provide fault tolerance for the BizTalk Hosts.

4 or more

4 or more (two Windows Server clusters)

This configuration can provide fault tolerance for all BizTalk components and dependencies that can be clustered by creating two multiple node clusters and using an Active/Passive model for each cluster. SQL Server and the Enterprise Single Sign-On Master Secret Server are run on one cluster. BizTalk Server is run on the other cluster. This configuration is recommended as the minimum number of computers to provide fault tolerance for SQL Server, Enterprise SSO, and BizTalk Hosts in a BizTalk Server environment.

BizTalk Visual Studio Solution Management

echarran — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:53:54 GMT

Here is a great post on how to organize your BizTalk projects and how to manage and version BTS assemblies.

Versioning Strategy for BizTalk Assemblies

BizTalk 2006 Custom Functoid Reference

echarran — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:06:07 GMT

Here is a great article about the custom functiod object model. It provides context around the methods, objects and properties for the functoid library.

http://techsavygal.wordpress.com/2006/02/

Installing BizTalk Server 2004

echarran — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 04:55:00 GMT

This is an old post from my pre-Microsoft blog from http://www.sessionstate.com.

Installing BizTalk Server 2004 is no light matter. While not overly complicated, it does require several pre-requisites and knowledge of the order of installation. Additionally, it is necessary to install some components in order to get some of the supporting tools to work as well, like the Health Activity Tool (HAT). The following is a list of requirements to install the product on a client or a server

Install SQL Server 2000 SP3A, including Analysis Services SP3A

Install the MSXML SDK

Install the SOAP SDK

Install SQL XML 3.0

Install MDAC 2.8

Install Office XP Web Components

Install BizTalk Server 2004

The installer will complain that you don't have the development tools installed if you are doing a server only installation. The way I chose to develop is to have a virtual machine with a server installation of BizTalk (no VS.NET IDE). I then have my development machine set up with the .NET IDE and BizTalk Server Administration components and developer components. This allows me to simulate a more realistic environment without the "everything works fine on my machine" phenomenon (trust me, most of the orchestrations will work beautifully on your machine if everything is on one box, but not so in reality). Following this approach will allow you to practice developing, packaging and deploying BTS assemblies. Also, be sure to have a bevy of domain accounts available to run your SQL Server under, as well as all the accounts for the services that BizTalk installs. For development, most of them can run as the same account. I believe there is an instance where the installer will complain if it is unsafe. Happy installing!