Analytics Widgets – What more can be done

Analytics Widgets – What more can be done

Introduction

In a data-driven business setup, there will be scenarios where critical executive decisions are made based on the performance reports of various components of the listed servers in their environment. BizTalk360 aims to offer an out of the box tool with similar capabilities as the Performance Monitor tool in Windows servers.

BizTalk360 Analytics offers visual display of the most important performance counters that are consolidated and arranged on a single screen, so that the information can be monitored in a glance. Custom reports can be built in minutes with the metrics that really count for your business, and they’re easy to share with other users in the system. In addition, dashboards can give you a summary of many reports on a single page, using drag-and-drop widgets for fast, easy customization.

The Analytics feature is available only to the Platinum licensed BizTalk360 environments. By default, the Analytics service is installed with BizTalk360 and in non-Platinum environments, users can only view sample analytics data.

The Analytics Widgets

It is with the Dashboard widgets that all the performance related information can be seen in a nice graphical display. In the Analytics section, there is also the reporting capability added, where the reports can be sent as attachment in emails.

In this blog I am going to explain a few scenarios where the Analytics widgets are more helpful. Let’s move on.

Customer Scenarios

The Analytics Dashboard contains lot of widgets that provide you detailed information of the performance of your BizTalk environment.

For example, the BizTalk Host Performance widget will help you to get the information of the top performing hosts in the BizTalk environment. The BizTalk messaging performance gives you the picture of the message count and average execution time of the total messages transferred during the configured datetime range.

Date Range – Select the date range for chart. The options are Last 24 hrs, Last 7 days, Last 30 days and Custom:

  • Last 24 Hrs – Displays the data from last 24 hours
  • Last 7 days – Displays the data from last 7 days
  • Last 30 days – Displays the data from last 30 days
  • Custom – To add a specific number of days, use the scroller to select the day

Based on the selected date range, the performance data gets collected from the BizTalk servers.

The other basic widgets include the Message volume and the Transmission failure rate widgets.

Lot more to do with Custom widgets

Don’t just stop with the basic widgets in the Analytics section; there is lot more to do with the Custom widgets.

Once the Analytics components, for which the data needs to be collected, are enabled, the different artifacts for the Custom widgets will get enabled. With the Custom widgets you can chose different metrics for which you want to view the data.

Let’s take a few scenarios to understand what we can achieve with the Custom widgets.

Comparing two BizTalk servers’ performances

There is a scenario where you would like to compare the performance of two BizTalk servers and see which one consumes more memory and CPU. This can be done by selecting the servers in the artifact section and corresponding metrics.

Get the message count for specific port

Of course, the count of messages passing through the port can be determined through process monitoring. But it will be checked with specific time intervals either in hours or minutes. But, what if you want to see the count instantly within the specific datetime range. Here comes the Custom widget, with which you can get the count of specific ports.

But to get these data, Tracking needs to be enabled for the ports. Based on the enabled tracking data collection counters, the data gets collected by the BizTalk360 Analytics service using the performance counters.

Failure rate of a port

Also, the failure rate of a particular port, running a specific host instance, can be determined with the help of a Custom widget. This would include the failure rate for the port and the number of instances running for that particular host. With the combination of these two metrics, the failure rate of a port can be determined and displayed in a nice graphical view.

Checking the MessageBoxDb

There are also counters for checking the MessageBoxDB. The key performance indicators of the message box database which includes the spool size and the status of the pending jobs, can be visualised with the widgets.

BizTalk Host Details

We do have certain metrics like Host Queue Length, number of instances and suspended instances for the particular hosts, which can be obtained from the custom widgets.

Above mentioned are the very few scenarios that can be achieved using the widgets. With the different combinations of the metrics, all performance related information can be obtained through the Analytics widgets.

Conclusion

Do you wish to see more information on the widgets or from the product itself, please put in your suggestions and feedback in our user voice portal https://feedback.biztalk360.com/. The existing ideas can also be voted for. We at BizTalk360 aim at providing the features that fulfill the customer requirements. It is from this feedback portal that the features get picked up for every release.

For more information about how these widgets work, check our Documentation portal.

Happy monitoring with BizTalk360 😊

Author: Praveena Jayanarayanan

I am working as Senior Support Engineer at BizTalk360. I always believe in team work leading to success because “We all cannot do everything or solve every issue. ‘It’s impossible’. However, if we each simply do our part, make our own contribution, regardless of how small we may think it is…. together it adds up and great things get accomplished.” View all posts by Praveena Jayanarayanan

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: String Splitter Functoid

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: String Splitter Functoid

I love this project! I have much fun doing it, and I use it a lot in my clients. So for me is what I call a win-win situation. So today I update BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack project with one new Functoid that you can use on your BizTalk Server maps Functoid: String Splitter Functoid.

Last week I had the needed to use a particular mapping functionality several times in different maps:

  • Extract one specific subset of a concatenated string;
    • For example “AA.123.SANDRO.312” and I need to extract the third position: “SANDRO”

My first strategy was to create a Scripting Functoid, but because I have to use it in different maps, I quickly change my approach and created this new Functoid that now you can use inside your BizTalk Server maps.

String Splitter Functoid

This functoid allows you to convert a string to a number (integer)

Parameters

This functoid split a string by a specific splitter character, and it accepts 3 inputs:

  • The first parameter is the input value to be split;
    • AA.123.SANDRO.312
    • AA-123-SANDRO-3122.
  • The second parameter is the position to be returned (the subset of the string to be retrieved);
  • The third parameter is the splitter character;

The output of the functoid will be a string present in the split array, example: SANDRO

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: String Splitter Functoid

In this In sample described in the above picture, we are receiving a string: “AA.123.SANDRO.312.1” and we want to retrieve the fourth subset of the concatenated string delimited by “.” character. So, in this case, the functoid will return: “1”.

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: Project Description

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack is a set of libraries with several useful functoids to include and use it in a map, which will provide an extension of BizTalk Mapper capabilities.

Where to download?

You can download this functoid along with all the existing one on the BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack  here:
BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack GitHub RepositoryBizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack
GitHub

Author: Sandro Pereira

Sandro Pereira lives in Portugal and works as a consultant at DevScope. In the past years, he has been working on implementing Integration scenarios both on-premises and cloud for various clients, each with different scenarios from a technical point of view, size, and criticality, using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft BizTalk Server and different technologies like AS2, EDI, RosettaNet, SAP, TIBCO etc. He is a regular blogger, international speaker, and technical reviewer of several BizTalk books all focused on Integration. He is also the author of the book “BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices”. He has been awarded MVP since 2011 for his contributions to the integration community. View all posts by Sandro Pereira

Microsoft Integration Weekly Update: November 12, 2018

Microsoft Integration Weekly Update: November 12, 2018

Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform?

Integration weekly update can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.

If you want to receive these updates weekly, then don’t forget to Subscribe!

Feedback

Hope this would be helpful. Please feel free to reach out to me with your feedback and questions.

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Monitoring IBM MQ (WebSphere MQ) with BizTalk360

Monitoring IBM MQ (WebSphere MQ) with BizTalk360

Introduction

In this article, we will provide an introduction of IBM MQ, how BizTalk Server can connect to IBM MQ and how to setup monitoring of IBM MQ Queues with BizTalk360.

IBM® MQ, formerly known as WebSphere MQ, is messaging-oriented middleware, which simplifies and accelerates the integration of different applications and data across multiple platforms. It uses message queues to exchange information for independent and non-concurrent applications in distributed systems. IBM MQ is available for large number of platforms, being:

  • z/OS (mainframe)
  • OS/400 (IBM System I or AS/400)
  • UNIX (AIX, HP-UX. Solaris)
  • HP Nonstop
  • Linux
  • OS 2000
  • Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows Platform

IBM MQ is messaging and queueing middleware, with several modes of operation:

    • Point-to-point
    • Publish/Subscribe
    • File Transfer

    For the Microsoft platform, users can create and manage IBM MQ with two options:

    • MQ Explorer GUI
    • Running commands from command window or application.

    For installing the MQ Explorer GUI, you can refer to this link and for installing the server using msiexec you can go to this link.

BizTalk Server and IBM MQ

As a middleware product, BizTalk Server can also connect to IBM MQ. For using IBM MQ with BizTalk Server, there are two adapters available.

  1. MQSeries Client (MQSC) Adapter
  2. MQSeries Adapter

MQSeries Client (MQSC) Adapter

The MQSC Adapter is available in the BizTalk Adapter for Host Systems installation that is part of Host Integration Server(HIS). This adapter is a light weight component of MQ that doesn’t require the MQSeries Queue Manager run-time code to reside on a client system. This adapter helps to connect IBM MQ queue manager on Windows and non-Windows platform. Using the MQSeries Client Adapter can do the following actions:

  • Send and receive messages from local Queue, MQSeries Remote Queue, Transmission Queue, and Alias queue from BizTalk Server
  • Connect Remote queue manager that reside on Windows platform or another platform directly from BizTalk server
  • It Support Clustered MQSeries Queue Manager and clustered BizTalk servers
  • It provides support Secure Socket Layer(SSL) for secure communication with MQSeries Queue Manager

MQSC Adapter Configuration

In a real-time scenario, the setup would be the following when using two servers

Server 1 (Windows)

Server 2 (Windows/Non-Windows)

BizTalk Server

WebSphere MQ

MQSC Adapter

WebSphere MQ Client (available from IBM)

If you want to use the WebSphere MQ Extended transactional client, you can use WebSphere MQ Client in Server 1.

MQSeries Adapter

MQSeries adapter requires IBM MQSeries Server for Windows to reside on the client system to communicate with an IBM WebSphere Queue Manager running on Windows or non-Windows. MQSeries comes with BizTalk Server installation. This adapter uses the MQSAgent2 COM+ application to put/get messages into the IBM MQ Queue Manager.  Using the MQSeries Adapter can do the following actions:

  • Send and Receive messages from local Queues, MQSeries Remote Queues, Transmission Queues, and Alias queues from BizTalk Server
  • Send and Receive messages from MQSeries Server for Windows. You need to deploy one copy of MQSAgent (COM+ of the adapter) to support BizTalk server installation
  • Dynamically create queues at runtime
  • Request for Delivery of transactional and non-transactional messages for send and receive
  • Dynamically receive messages from queues based on MQSeries MatchOptions

MQSeries Adapter Configuration

IBM MQ can be installed in multiple different configurations. Below you find an overview of which components need to be installed in case IBM MQ will be installed on one, two or three servers.

For configuring the MQSeries Adapter on a single Server:

Server 1 (Windows)

BizTalk Server

MQSeries Adapter

MQSAgent2 COM+ Application

WebSphere MQ

And for the configuring it in two servers:

Case 1 – Installation while combining Windows and Non-Windows servers

Server 1 (Windows)

Server 2 (Windows/Non-Windows)

BizTalk Server

WebSphere MQ

MQSeries Adapter

MQSAgent2 COM+ application

MQSeries Server for windows

Case 2 – Installation on 2 Windows servers

Server 1 (Windows)

Server 2 (Windows)

BizTalk server

MQSAgent2 COM+ application

MQSeries adapter

WebSphere MQ

If you want to configure MQSeries Adapter on three servers, the configuration would be as follows:

Server 1 (Windows)

Server 2 (Windows)

Server 3 (Windows/Non-Windows)

BizTalk Server

MQSAgent2 COM+ Application

WebSphere MQ

MQSeries Adapter

MQSeries Server for windows (Available from IBM)

 

Monitoring IBM MQ with BizTalk360

BizTalk360 has the capability to monitor the IBM MQ Queues that are configured with the receive location and send ports mapped with either MQSeries Client Adapter or MQSeries Adapter. BizTalk360 has the following requirements:

  • Monitor the accessibility of the queue manager and queues
  • Monitor the growth of queues and corresponding backout queue
  • Identify the backout queues automatically and start monitoring them

You can refer to this link for an article about how to configure an IMB MQ queue for monitoring with BizTalk360.

Errors while connecting from BizTalk360 to IBM MQ

Customer might face errors or technical challenges while configuring BizTalk360 to monitor IBM MQ queues. Some of the error codes are:

  • 2033 – MQRC_NO_MSG_AVAILABLE
  • 2035 – MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED
  • 2059 – MQRC_Q_MGR_NOT_AVAILABLE
  • 2538 – MQRC_HOST_NOT_AVAILABLE

We can see the details about the errors and resolution:

MQRC_NO_MSG_AVAILABLE – 2033

MQRC_NO_MSG_AVAILABLE

Reason: There is no message on the queue

Resolution: This is an expected condition; no corrective action is required.

MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED – 2035

MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED

Reason: Trying to open a queue in a cluster

Resolution: create a local alias to the cluster queue, or authorize all users to have access to the transmission queue

Provide object authorities in the queue level or queue manager level  to the user in the MQ Explorer.

MQRC_Q_MGR_NOT_AVAILABLE – 2059

MQRC_Q_MGR_NOT_AVAILABLE

Reason:

  1. The default queue manager is not running
  2. The MQ listener program associated with the default queue manager is not running
  3. The default queue manager is not defined on the local system

Resolution:

  1. Determine the name of the queue manager
  2. Verify that the queue manager exists on the local machine, and that it is running
  3. Verify that the listener program is running
  4. Verify that queue manager trying to connect is the default queue manager
  5. If necessary, make queue manager as the default queue manager

MQRC_HOST_NOT_AVAILABLE – 2538

Connect to a queue manager but the attempt to allocate a conversation to the remote system failed.

MQRC_HOST_NOT_AVAILABLE

Reason:

  1. The listener has not been started on the remote system
  2. The connection name in the client channel definition is incorrect
  3. The network is currently unavailable
  4. A firewall blocking the port, or protocol-specific traffic
  5. The security call initializing the IBM MQ client is blocked by a security exit on the SVRCONN channel at the server

Resolution: Examine the client error log for messages explaining the cause of the problem

Here is the link of list of error codes while using IBM MQ.

Hope you found this article helpful. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please add it in our feedback portal. You can get started with monitoring IBM MQ by downloading the 30-day free trial of BizTalk360.

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: New Math Functoids

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: New Math Functoids

And once again I decide to publish another release on my Mapper Extensions UtilityPack project adding new functionalities to this toolset. This time I decided to release 2 new BizTalk Math Functoids:

  • Negate Number Functoid: You can use the Negate Number functoid to return the input number (double) in its negated form.
    • If it’s positive, it will return as negative and vice-versa.
    • If zero, of course, will return zero.
  • SmartRound Functoid: You can use the SmartRound Functoid to return any number (int or double) rounded up or down to any decimal place, specified by the second parameter of this functoid.

Negate Number Functoid

Use the Negate Number functoid to return the input number (double) in its negated form.

Parameters

The functoid takes one mandatory input parameter:

  1. Parameter 1: Number to be negated (double or int).

The output of the functoid will be the input number in is negative form. For example:

  • Input 1 –> Output = -1
  • Input -23,09 –> Output = 23,09
  • Input 0 –> Output = 0

BizTalk Server Math Functoids: Negate Number Functoid

SmartRound Functoid

Use the SmartRound Functoid to return any number (int or double) rounded up or down to any decimal place, specified by the second parameter of this functoid.

Parameters

The functoid takes two mandatory input parameters:

  1. Parameter 1: Number to be rounded (double or int)
  2. Parameter 2: Number to decimals places

The output of the functoid will be the input number rounded up or down to the specified decimal places. For example:

  • Input 23 rounded to 2 –> Output = 23,00
  • Input 24,005900 rounded to 3 –> Output = 24,006

BizTalk Server Math Functoids: SmartRound Functoid

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack: Project Description

BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack is a set of libraries with several useful functoids to include and use it in a map, which will provide an extension of BizTalk Mapper capabilities.

Where to download?

You can download this functoid along with all the existing one on the BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack  here:
BizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack GitHub RepositoryBizTalk Mapper Extensions UtilityPack
GitHub

Author: Sandro Pereira

Sandro Pereira lives in Portugal and works as a consultant at DevScope. In the past years, he has been working on implementing Integration scenarios both on-premises and cloud for various clients, each with different scenarios from a technical point of view, size, and criticality, using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft BizTalk Server and different technologies like AS2, EDI, RosettaNet, SAP, TIBCO etc. He is a regular blogger, international speaker, and technical reviewer of several BizTalk books all focused on Integration. He is also the author of the book “BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices”. He has been awarded MVP since 2011 for his contributions to the integration community. View all posts by Sandro Pereira

Getting BizTalk360 to run a BHM Monitoring profile

Getting BizTalk360 to run a BHM Monitoring profile

Continuing in our series of blogs, Customer feedback getting Answered, where we will be trying to address and answer some of the issues, where a workaround is possible, rather than awaiting a new feature release.

Today we will address an issue relating to BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) integration in BizTalk360.

Issue at hand

One of our existing customers posted the following feedback request: http://feedback.biztalk360.com/forums/331695-biztalk360-operations/suggestions/20567692-bhm-bt360-profile-use-monitoring-profile
He wanted to specify or change the BHM Monitoring Profile that BizTalk360 should use.

Monitoring Profile in BHM

The BizTalk snap-in, “BizTalk Health Monitor” (aka “BHM”), has so been created to help you easily monitor the health of your BizTalk environment. BHM is based on the same engine as MBV. This snap-in can be added to the existing BizTalk Administration Console or can be run individually in its own MMC window.

A Monitoring profile is in fact a BHM profile, but configured specifically to execute a short selection of critical BHM queries/rules and custom rules checking the state of given ports, orchestrations, host instances, queues and BizTalk databases sizes and raise critical warnings detected in a log.

Current Working of BizTalk360 integrated BHM

The BizTalk360 product integrates with BHM, but currently has the limitation that you cannot specify a profile, that is stored in BHM, which should be scheduled and run at those specific times.

Solution Workaround

If you wish for BizTalk360 to run a certain BHM profile – Follow the below workaround.

  • Save the Profile. This will automatically save a copy in the folder – C:ProgramDataMicrosoftBizTalkHealthMonitor with the name MBVSETTINGS_.xml
  • Now you need to copy this XML file and paste it in the BizTalk360 folder – C:Program Files (x86)Kovai LtdBizTalk360Service.
  • Delete the existing MBVSETTINGS.xml and rename the copied file to MBVSETTINGS.xml

Now BizTalk360 has been setup to pick that Profile to execute in it’s scheduled runs. Then, the next time you hit -> ‘Run BHM now‘, or BizTalk360 scheduled runs for BHM start, BizTalk360 will pick that profile and run the rules for it.

Hope you found this workaround helpful.

Thanks to our customer Joost for his help in the investigation.

Author: Rochelle Saldanha

Rochelle Saldanha is currently working in the Customer Support & Client Relationship Teams at BizTalk360. She loves travelling and watching movies. View all posts by Rochelle Saldanha

Microsoft Integration Weekly Update: November 05, 2018

Microsoft Integration Weekly Update: November 05, 2018

Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform?

Integration weekly update can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.

If you want to receive these updates weekly, then don’t forget to Subscribe!

Feedback

Hope this would be helpful. Please feel free to reach out to me with your feedback and questions.

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Cross-domain file monitoring

Cross-domain file monitoring

One of the core features of BizTalk360 is it’s monitoring and notification capability. BizTalk Server is used in mission-critical environments to integrate different applications within the enterprise. While BizTalk Server can integrate with multiple applications and provide a one-stop solution for enterprises, it lacks the ability to allow the administrators to monitor, amongst others, the health of connected applications.

BizTalk360 understands the problems faced by enterprises and offers an out-of-the-box monitoring solution that assists administrators to monitor the BizTalk environments. BizTalk360 solves the purpose of being able to monitor BizTalk Server solutions in a simple and easy manner.

So, What Can BizTalk360 Monitor?

BizTalk360 allows administrators to set up alerts on specific components of BizTalk Server, such as:

  • BizTalk Applications and their Send Ports, Receive Locations, Orchestrations, Service Instances
  • Disks
  • Event Logs
  • NT Services
  • System Resources (CPU, Memory)
  • SQL Jobs
  • Web Endpoints
  • BizTalk Health Monitor, Errors and Warnings
  • Host instances (normal, clustered)
  • Azure services
  • Queues – MSMQ, Azure Service Bus, IBM MQ
  • File Location – File, FTP and SFTP
  • Database queries

I would like to explain the feature of File Location monitoring usage and the challenges we faced.

File Location Monitoring

File Locations Monitoring is one of the core monitoring capabilities which we had introduced in BizTalk360 v8.4. From our customers, we received many requests to introduce the ability to monitor Folder Level into BizTalk360.

How File Location monitoring works?

BizTalk360 has the capability of fetching the file locations which are configured in the BizTalk Admin console.

File Location Monitoring lists all the locations configured in the BizTalk Artifacts (Send Ports and Receive Locations) for the Transport Types (File, FTP, SFTP) respectively and shows them in the UI. Users can map only the file location of BizTalk Artifacts; file locations which are not mapped with the artifacts will not be monitored from BizTalk360.

Cross-domain

Just to give an overview of a domain

A domain is a group of computers and devices on a network that is administered as a unit with common rules and procedures. Within the Internet, domains are defined by the IP address. All devices sharing a common part of the IP address are said to be in the same domain.

Overview of Cross-domain

By cross-domain, we refer to the communication between different domains by creating trusts.

A trust is a relationship established between two different domains that enable users in one domain to be authenticated by a domain controller in the other domain. There are different types of trusts in the Microsoft Active Directory domain such as External, Realm, Forest and shortcut. An external trust is necessary when users of two different domains of two different business units want to utilize resources such as printers and file servers of trusted domains.

Cross-domain in BizTalk

In BizTalk, the receive locations or the send ports can be configured with the file locations present in the server. These locations may be in the same server or in a different server in the different domain. With the trust created between the domains, the file transfer would happen, and the message gets transferred.

File Location monitoring in BizTalk360

As said earlier, in BizTalk360 we have the capability to monitor file locations and trigger alerts based on the file count and directory size configuration.

The BizTalk360 monitoring service will check for the file count and directory size and trigger alert emails. So, as per the environment configuration, the service account running the monitoring service will need access permissions to the BizTalk environment to fetch the data of the BizTalk artifacts.

Often the support tickets raised by customers provide different learning experiences to the support team. One such ticket was an issue with the file monitoring.

Configure File Location monitoring

Configuring File Location monitoring is a very straightforward activity in BizTalk360. You have the option to configure with authentication mode as well as anonymous mode. BizTalk360 will automatically list down all the available file locations on the server.

Click the Gear icon to open the File Details blade and toggle on the Authentication button to enter the username and password. If the username and password columns are blank, it will be considered as anonymous authentication. Configure the warning and error rules for monitoring under the File Monitoring Configurations settings. Click Save Configurations to complete the process.

Scenario 1: Cross-domain file share

One of our customers raised an issue that a file share is getting Orphaned once after configuring with the alarm. We started with the basic troubleshooting steps.

We understood that customer configured a File path in BizTalk server which is a cross domain. In detail for the specific send port, they used a file adapter and while they provide a path they have provided a path where the folder is available in a different domain.

Troubleshooting the problem

We asked the customer to share if any exception appeared and we received that “the username and password are incorrect”.

Technically, BizTalk360 should monitor the specific file without any issues. This is the reason why we are using BizTalk360’s monitoring service account to fetch the details. If BizTalk360 monitoring service needs access across the domain, it should monitor without any problem.

To find the exact root cause of the issue we have developed a console application(with logs enabled) and provided it to the customer. Developing back and forth, we found that it’s an authentication issue and solved it in version 8.9 of the product.

Scenario 2 – Monitoring a cross-domain Linux server

It’s again an interesting case once after the release of version 8.9 (fix for cross domain file monitoring). One of our customers came with a feedback that he is facing a problem with file monitoring.

Once we engaged a call with our customer, we found that they are using a Linux machine for a folder path in the BizTalk server, which is a cross domain. In detail, for the specific send port, they used a File adapter and while they provided the path, they have provided a folder which is available in a different domain in a Linux machine.

Troubleshooting the problem

We asked the customer to share if any exception appeared and we received the same error that “username and password is incorrect”.

To connect the Linux folder location from the Windows machine, the customer used a tool called Samba share. We have enhanced our code to authenticate and connect the Linux machines with encrypt and decrypt, along with NT service mechanism.


Later, we have provided a console application to our customer which solved the problem. We have planned to include the fix in our upcoming version.

What about FTP and SFTP?

By default, FTP and SFTP are hosted in a web(domain)and we support cross-domain in FTP and SFTP file monitoring.

Conclusion

This was another support case which was interesting for me as it helped me to understand the code from a Developer perspective. I have explored a different kind of cross-domains from the Tester perspective. Working along with the customer gave satisfaction as a Support engineer. Hope I will receive “an Awesome” review from the customer side 😊

Author: Sivaramakrishnan Arumugam

Sivaramakrishnan is our Support Engineer with quite a few certifications under his belt. He has been instrumental in handling the customer support area. He believes Travelling makes happy of anyone. View all posts by Sivaramakrishnan Arumugam