BizTalk Hotrod 8

Before end of the year a new issue of BizTalk Hotrod is made available. I happy to announce that my article around BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 is in this issue. Some of you know that I posted a few things around BizTalk Adapter Pack in August. This inspired me to write an article and share my experience/knowledge with fellow BizTalk professionals in the world. Information shared was a bit more than you put in a blog post. Alongside my article you will find articles about ESB Toolkit, BAM, HL7, Management with Powershell from fellow Dutch BizTalk pro Randal van Splunteren and all, Creating Custom Receive Decoder Pipeline and Business Process Automation with SharePoint and BizTalk. Enjoy reading the magazine.

Technorati: BizTalkBizTalk 2006 R2BizTalk Server 2009

Monitoring BizTalk Solutions – The Tools Part 4

Monitoring Scenario

In this post and the next I would like to go through a scenario to have the ability to further evaluate the three monitoring tools for BizTalk. I will use an Oracle backend (i.e. Oracle 10g Express), .NET, BizTalk and a Windows Front End application. I have an environment (VPC) that contains BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0, Oracle Express 10g, BizTalk Server 2009 and the three monitoring tools BizMon, Minotaur and FRENDS Helium. In this scenario we will expose data inside Oracle database to an application and update this information to our liking and see to it that it will be updated in Oracle database. BizTalk (Messaging) together with Adapter Pack 2.0 (Connectivity) will be exposing the Oracle through messages, by submitting a request and receiving a response. Update to data be routed back through update request and response will be shown in front end application. Below you will find a diagram to visualize the process (scenario) just described. We will use the three monitoring tools to monitor the processes. In this post I will focus on first process of searching employees. The other post as a follow up will describe and go into the update process.

Windows Application simply lets you search by last name for an employee in Oracle database. Screenshot below shows the simple UI for this.

Through entering a last name and click Search some employee detail will be given as result (process it displayed above!). Result below is given for employee with last name: King.

Ok If you do this a couple of times let’s see what out monitoring tools will give as information about this process. Before we will do this I like to explain how I made this scenario work from a technical perspective. I created a windows application with c#, schemas generated from Oracle Express Edition using BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0, a custom schema (contract for request/response) of search, and maps. Custom schema I used to create a Wcf Service in BizTalk using BizTalk WCF Service Publishing Wizard. Wcf is hosted in receive location for my BizTalk application called HRM. With Wcf service in place I created a service reference from Windows Application, so I am able to call the service with search criteria (last name). When service is called it will send request message based on custom schema. The message will be mapped to a request message based on generated schema from Oracle and will be send by a port that has a subscription on that message type. Send port is a static solicit request/response port, so result from request message sent to Oracle will be received and mapped again to custom schema response message.

Custom schema (Contract)

BizMon

With latest version of BizMon I looked at this process through web user interface. I enable data tracking so I can track messages going to and from Oracle XE. UI will signal this:

Missing tracked ports: Data Tracking is enabled but no ports has been added. Add your most critical ports by using the drop-down menu next to each port.

For both ports I enabled tracking:

By enabling tracking I able to see what is going on.

That looks pretty cool doesn’t it? On BizMon website you will find also an instruction video explaining tracking.

FRENDS Helium

For this scenario the FRENDS Helium monitoring give you the overview below by simply go to the web front end and select HRM application.

Here you basically can click detailed information to give a more detailed view:

Minotaur

Last but not least I fired up the Minotaur tool and clicked Dashboard. The Dashboard gives an overview of the overall health of BizTalk environment.

Minotaur gives me more capabilities in monitoring my BizTalk HRM Application. I can for instance configure monitoring at Receive locations; by clicking Recieve Locations in Monitor Setup section I can add a record:

I select the application, available receive location, health monitoring (check/uncheck), and what action. I do similar thing for Send Ports. I can now view health of my BizTalk environment and HRM application.

I stopped send port and could see the following happening in my health dashboard.

I did not notice an event entry in event log (so still something to figure out here); what I do noticed that if you click red dot, some detail will appear.

Other two tools showed following:

As you can see I figured out some of the capabilities of these monitoring tools. Helium offers the least capabilities and a can be viewed as a viewer for your BizTalk applications running in BizTalk. You can do this also with Minotaur and BizMon, that offer a lot more capabilities than what I have showed you here in this post.

I do feel that using Minotaur will have a steeper learning curve to use it appropriately than BizMon. This does not really come to a surprise to me, because BizMon is more targeted to 1-tier support or the business and Minotaur is more targeted to 2- or 3-tier support. Latter is more technical and knowledge of BizTalk, Operating Systems and SQL Server is required. SO both have their value in an enterprise can coexist. More evaluation and experiences gained by using these tools will come in next post, where the other part of the scenario will be shown.

Technorat: BizTalkBizTalk 2006 R2BizTalk Server 2009

Monitoring BizTalk Solutions – The Tools Part 3

In previous posts (part 1, part 2) I mentioned three tools for monitoring BizTalk solution, BizMon, Minotaur and FRENDS Helium. In this post I want to dive into installation, configuration of FRENDS Helium. This is a web-based tool for monitoring BizTalk Server installations and provides operators a simple view to error situations occurred in BizTalk Server installation. You obtain a trail version through their website. You will be provided with license key instantly and url to download trail. Note that you have to give your details by registering yourself. If you fail to do so you will be presented by following message:

License error
Sorry, the license could not be verified:
Loading license failed: Could not find file 'C:\Program Files\Frends Technology\FRENDS Helium\FrendsHelium.lic'.

Please contact your friendly administrator, he should be able to fix the license problem.

Installation on my VPC was pretty straight forward, but I did run into determining disk problem again so I did the installation through command line using: msiexec.exe -package <MyPackage.msi> –qr.Installation prerequisites are similar to Minotaur and BizMon:

•Windows Server 2003 / 2008 / 2008 R2
•You must be logged on as administrator.
•.NET Framework 3.5 with SP1 installed.
•ASP.NET version 2.0 is configured and enabled in IIS
•BizTalk 2006 R2 / 2009 needs to be installed, because some BizTalk assemblies are needed for FRENDS Helium to function. However, BizTalk does not need to be configured, and therefore does not need a separate license.

The installer must be run with administrative privileges, on an UAC enabled computer this is most easily done by running the installer from an admin command prompt. FRENDS Helium 1.1 runs in IIS using a custom application pool using a defined user account. The user account and password is given in the IIS settings page. The application pool user has to belong to the following user groups:

•'BizTalk Server Administrators'
•'Performance Monitor Users' (only with IIS 6)
•'IIS_WPG' (only with IIS 6)
•'IIS_IUSRS' (optionally on IIS 7 - by default, IIS 7 should not require this)
The user also needs Read and Execute and List Folder Contents rights for the following folders: - these should be already set by default

•C:\Program Files\Frends Technology\FRENDS Helium
•C:\Windows\Temp

I created a user account have the right privileges called Helium_Usr_acc (member of BizTalk Server Administrators, IIS_IUSRS). Very basic and similar compared to installation and configuration of BizMon and Minotaur, so I will not bother you with setup screens this time. Screen below will show the end result after installation and configuration of HELIUM.

This concludes my first experience with the three BizTalk Monitoring tools so far. Below you find a comparison table that reflects my findings so far and do not resemble the total of features/capabilities the tools offer!

Feature\Capability	BizMon	Minotaur	FRENDS Helium
Web-Front End (aspx)	Yes	Yes	Yes
IIS 6.0/7.0 Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
BizTalk Server 2009/2006 R2 Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Help documentation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Monitor Service (Custom Windows Service)	Yes	Yes	No
Subscription Service	Yes	Yes	No
Windows Server 2003/2008 Support	Yes	Yes	Yes

BizMon and Minotaur deliver more features and capabilities out-of-box than FRENDS Helium. The latter is more a viewer than tools that can help in providing notifications for instance through subcritpions like BizMon and Minotaur. This is in my view a strong feature that can help in providing pro-active monitoring. In my view BizMon is targeted at tier-1 support people, and is close to business side of organization. People here are mainly non-technical and BizMon and FRENDS Helium are targeted to technical people and serve better as tier-2 tools. I think Minotaur can also be used in tier-3 together with SCOM for instance to have a better view on technical/infrastructural side. None of the tools offer capability to bring up payload of message through an inuative manner, which something I experience as a desirable feature for support people. In next post I delve into scenario’s these tools can be meaningful to use.

Technorati: BizTalkBizTalk 2006 R2BizTalk Server 2009

Monitoring BizTalk Solutions – The Tools Part 2

In previous post (part 1) I mentioned three tools for monitoring BizTalk solution, BizMon, Minotaur and FRENDS Helium. In this post I want to dive into installation, configuration of Minotaur V1.04 monitoring tool. I use same environment as for BizMon tool. Minotaur is licensed per BizTalk group, so after installation you will to ask for a license key by sending an email to Registration@RagingBullTech.com with following details: SQL Server Name \ Instance Name and BizTalk Management database name.

When you want to install Minotaur on Windows 2008 as in my environment it has to be done under a local administrator account. This account also needs to be member of BizTalk Administration group and in my case since I am using IIS 7.0 also member of IIS_IUSRS group. During installation three components can be installed:

After features page you will be presented with the SQL Information page, the Connection String page and the Service Credentials page.

For service crendentials I created a service account with appropiate rights: member of IIS_IUSRS group, member of BizTalk Administrators group and local admin.

Note: Service credentials installation screen you need to specify the user name in the format of machine_name\user_name or domain_name\user_name. Please ensure that the MinotaurService NTservice is started and running. In our test lab using Windows 2008, the operating system does not default to the machine or domain when you set the user to logon the service. (Thanks Riaan Gouws Raging Bull Tech for this comment,)

When installation progresses and succesfully ends you will be presented with a browser opening with documentation for the tool:

After the installation you will need lisence key to operate Minotaur.

After registering your BizTalk group your are al set to go.

As you can see there are a lot of options available in the tool. One of them being configure. You can for instance configure smtp so you are able to sent messages out to BizTalk operators. You can also add people to mailing list through subscriptions.

Installation and configuration of Minotaur is pretty straigh forward like BizMon; only you will need a license key to operate. Getting the license key is easy and a simple request will do. In next post I will dive into installation and configuration of FRENDS Helium before I will be comparing the tools using different sceanrio’s.

Technorati: BizTalkBizTalk 2006 R2BizTalk Server 2009