Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot » BizTalk

Hyper-V – Reducing the cost of your BizTalk 2009 farm – really?

Owen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:19:01 +0000

Interesting post on Nick Happleston’s blog entitled: Hyper-V Dramatically Lowers the Price Point for BizTalk 2009 which talks about how Microsoft’s virtualisation technology enables enterprises to deploy BizTalk in a cheaper configuration. It makes reference to Chris Rompâ€™sÂ blog entry BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide, but applies the same principles to BizTalk 2009.

My only issue with the cost reduction is that it revolves around the fact that BizTalk is licensed based on the number of physical processors on the box it’s running on. Based on this assumption, you can have a box running Hyper-V where you pay for 2 processors regardless of how many BizTalk boxes are deployed on it. You can therefore double or quadruple the size of your BizTalk farm without incurring additional license fees. The theory is sound, but although the BizTalk roadmap talks about the features of the new version, but doesn’t go into details on licensing implications of the new version. Also, I have one fundamental issue with it.

The question that needs to be asked is “Why are you scaling your BizTalk farm?” If you’re doing it because of performance implications, than 4 virtual BizTalk boxes aren’t going to run any quicker than 2 virtual BizTalk boxes on the same hardware. If you’re doing it because of logical groupings within your application, then you’re not using BizTalk Groups correctly (this is a feature that allows you to deploy different BizTalk applications across multiple servers). You’re certainly not doing it for resilience as you’re running on the same hardware regardless.

So, interesting post; but not quite sure I see the point.

Announcing BizTalk Server R3

Owen — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:25:29 +0000

For all those out there still working in the Microsoft integration space, keep your eyes open for the next iteration of BizTalk Server 2006. I’ve just picked this up from Andy James’ Solidsoft blog:

Today, Steve Martin announced a few details about the next version of BizTalk that will be available in early 2009. The release will be BizTalk Server 2006 R3, and is an incremental release of BizTalk and not related to the future Oslo releases. In the main this is a this compatibility release to support the 2008 wave of products.(Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio.NET 2008). Expect a CTP later in the year and full release after SQL 2008 goes gold. Additional features include:

New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0
Enhanced service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)
Enhanced service enablement of “edge” devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile
Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for B2B protocols (like SWIFT, EDI, etc)
SOA patterns and best practices guidance to assist our customer’s implementations

BizTalk Server R2 and Beyond

Owen — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 09:25:41 +0000

Microsoft are holding
a webcast to talk about R2 of BizTalk
2006 on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 8:30 AM – Wednesday, August 30, 2006 9:30 AM
Pacific Time. If you’re into BizTalk, it’s a must-see. Here’s the blurb:

BizTalk 2006 Release 2 (R2) is due out in the first half of 2007, with early preview
code to be made available soon. R2 includes a number of enhancements to BizTalk Server
2006, including native support for EDI, a new set of services supporting RFID technology,
the WinFX Adapter Framework that provides a common basis for building integration
adapters that can be consumed by a variety of client applications, and a number of
Line of Business adaptors built on the framework that allows communication with SAP,
Siebel, and Oracle DB. Come hear about the new capabilities R2 brings to BizTalk Server
2006, where we are taking BizTalk Server beyond R2, and opportunities to engage with
Microsoft today on BizTalk.

Kudos to Nigel for the link

BizTalk 2006 released to manufactue

Owen — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 23:08:17 +0000

Latest news: BizTalk 2006 has been released to manufacture: Microsoft Significantly Enhances Business Process Management Capabilities With BizTalk Server 2006: Customers embrace the ease of use of BizTalk Server 2006 to automate core business processes and integrate applications.

Where’s adm_OtherBackupDatabases then ?

Owen — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:27:39 +0000

Here’s an interesting BizTalk 2004 bug we came across today. Essentially, if you try to keep your BizTalk installation lean and choose not to install certain features, then the packaged backup jobs fail because of a missing table in the database. The actual error message in the event log reads:

Description: SQL Server Scheduled Job ‘Backup BizTalk Server’ (0x2CA1BE52A58C7045893DEC5F25FAAA6B) – Status: Failed – Invoked on: 2004-03-25 11:43:48 – Message: The job failed. The Job was invoked by User SA. The last step to run was step 1 (BackupFull). The job was requested to start at step 1 (BackupFull).

Which tells you that the job failed .. but finding out WHY is another matter. We started tracing through the code and figured out it was failing with an Invalid object name ‘adm_OtherBackupDatabases’ error message. Not finding a stored procedure or table with that name in BizTalkMgmtDb, I popped adm_OtherBackupDatabases term in Google and lo and behold, the first entry was an MSDN article about a known bug in BizTalk Server 2004.

What’s new in BizTalk Server 2006

Owen — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:45:14 +0000

Came across a webcast called “What’s new in BizTalk Server 2006″ by Jeff Wierer. Here’s the blurb:

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 is coming soon?are you ready for it? BizTalk Server 2006 improves on its predecessor in all dimensions of application-to-application, business-to-business, and business-process automation. Learn about the enhancements BizTalk 2006 introduces in the runtime engine, including support for in-order message processing, non-atomic interchange, execution of pipeline from an orchestration, and creation of error handling orchestration for automatic error processing. We demonstrate the new BizTalk 2006 POP3, Web Services Enhancements 2.0, and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services adapters, and describe the enhancements in the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol adapter to support attachments and the ‘follow up’ flag.

Watch it here

BizTalk 2006 FAQ

Owen — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 06:56:02 +0000

Been playing with BizTalk 2006? Doug Girard has posted the top 50 questions asked by the people who have previewed the new BizTalk version. Check them out here

Microsoft buys iWay adpaters

Owen — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 14:14:45 +0000

Microsoft has bought 8 of the iWay adapters for BizTalk and will be shipping a version for BizTalk 2006. More here

BizUnit 2.0 – Automated testing for BizTalk Solutions

Owen — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 10:21:21 +0000

Kevin Smith has just released v2.0 of BizUnit, an automated testing framework to enable rapid development of automated functional testing for BizTalk solutions. If you work with BizTalk, make sure to try it!

BizTalk 2004 HTTP Receive

Owen — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 23:02:39 +0000

Spent this morning helping Nigel find out why he couldn’t send an XML/HTTP message
to his BizTalk installation. Basically,
the trick is that the user the Application Pool hosting the BizTalk receive DLL (
BTSHTTPReceive.dll ) needs to be running under the identity of a user which is a member
of the local IIS_WPG group
AND must also be a member of the BizTalk
Isolated Hosts group. The biggest problem was the someone else had installed on
configured BizTalk and things weren’t as we expected. The root of the problem was
the assumption that a user named “Isolated Host User” was actually a member of the
“BizTalk Isolated Host User Group” in Active
Directory.

The morale of the story; never assume that someone else has set things up correctly