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Microsoft earlier today released BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 for Microsoft BizTalk Server. This release comes 7 months after Microsoft announced the Feature Pack 1 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016.

The BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 (FP2) contains all functionalities of Feature Pack 1 and all the fixes in the Cumulative Update 3. This FP2 can be installed on BizTalk Server 2016 Enterprise and Developer Edition. You can download the latest version from here.

What’s available in BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

In BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2, Microsoft is adding the following capabilities –

  • Deploy applications easily into multiple servers using Deployment Groups
  • Backup to Azure Blob Storage account
  • Azure Service Bus adapter now supports the Service Bus Premium capabilities
  • Full support for Transport Layer Security 1.2 authentication and encryption
  • Support for HL7 2.7.1
  • Expose SOAP endpoints with API Management
  • Event Hub Adapter to send and receive messages from Azure Event Hubs
  • Ability to use SQL default instances and SQL named instances with Application Insights

Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS

With BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1, Microsoft introduced the capability where users can perform continuous build and deployment seamlessly. Check out the detailed blog article that covers the ALM Continuous Deployment Support with VSTS via Visual Studio capability in detail.

In BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2, Microsoft has added improvements where users can use deployment groups to deploy BizTalk applications to multiple servers. This comes in addition to using the agent-based deployment.

Backup to Azure Blob Storage account

In BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2, once you have installed and configured BizTalk server, you can configure the Backup BizTalk Server job to backup your BizTalk databases and log files into Azure Blob storage account.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

Event Hub Adapter in BizTalk Server 2016

With BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2, you can send and receive messages between Azure Event Hubs and BizTalk Server.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

Azure Service Bus adapter now supports the Service Bus Premium capabilities

You can use the Service Bus adapter to send and receive messages from Service Bus queues, topics and relays. With this adapter, it becomes easy to connect the on-premise BizTalk server to Azure. In BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2, you can send messages to partitioned queues and topics. Additionally, FP2 supports Service Bus Premium capabilities for enterprise scale workloads.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

Expose SOAP endpoints with API Management

With the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 release, you can expose a WCF-BasicHTTP receive location as an endpoint (SOAP based) from the BizTalk Server Admin console. This enhancement comes in addition to the API Management integrations made in Feature Pack 1 where you can expose an endpoint through API Management from BizTalk.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

Ability to use SQL default instances and SQL named instances with Application Insights

In BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1, Microsoft introduced the capability for users to be able to send tracking data to Application Insights. The Feature Pack 2 supports additional capabilities such as support for SQL default instances and SQL named instances. In addition, users can also send tracking data to Azure Event Hubs.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

Within Application Insights, under the Metrics section, select Custom to view the available tracked properties.

BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2Image Source – Microsoft Documentation

Download and Get Started with BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2

The BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 can be installed on BizTalk Server 2016 Enterprise and Developer Edition (retail, CU1, CU2, CU3, FP). You can download the latest version from here.

Summary

It is really exciting to see the Feature Pack updates being released by the Pro Integration team. This really shows their commitment to Microsoft BizTalk Server and their vision to integrate on-premise solutions with the cloud.

Author: Sriram Hariharan

Sriram Hariharan is the Senior Technical and Content Writer at BizTalk360. He has over 9 years of experience working as documentation specialist for different products and domains. Writing is his passion and he believes in the following quote – “As wings are for an aircraft, a technical document is for a product — be it a product document, user guide, or release notes”. View all posts by Sriram Hariharan