Windows Azure Poster
Microsoft just released a new useful poster. This one describes all Windows Azurebricks. All developers, architects or anyone else who work on Microsoft Azure must download it : 
Blog Post by: Jeremy Ronk
Designing for Mobile First
Designing for responsive layouts has been a big topic lately. I’ve been reading up on it a lot, and have officially been won over to a side. I believe that starting small and working upwards in size is most often the best way to create websites these days. We should start with the mobile design […]
Blog Post by: Karissa Wingate
Routing exceptions on send ports to the ESB Exception Management Portal without turning on routing for failed messages (Part 2)
A colleague of mine was discussing my blog post “Routing exceptions on send ports to the ESB Exception Management Portal without turning on routing for failed messages (Part 1)” with me since he wanted to implement the pattern on his own project, but he wanted to take this a bit further. He wanted for the […]
Blog Post by: Johann
Enabling Authentication/Authorization on a BizTalk WCF-NetMsmq Receive Location using Transport Security and ACLs
I’ve recently been working on a project that uses a WCF-NetMsmq receive location which points to a transactional private queue to receive messages into BizTalk Server 2010 (note that this is on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine, experiences might differ slightly with different versions of the OS which come packaged with different versions of […]
Blog Post by: Johann
BAM: Regenerating data for non-RTA views
If you have log-shipped or moved your BAM databases to another environment, you might find that the legacy data in your non-rta view vanishes and only recent data is displayed. This defeats the purpose of having scheduled aggregations to view data over months. However, there is a way to “reset” your cubes. In the BAMPrimaryImport […]
Blog Post by: DipeshA
BizTalk Summit 2013, London. Brought to you by Microsoft + BizTalk360
The fire is on in the BizTalk land, following the recent BizTalk Summit 2012, held in Redmond on 10th and 11th of December. Microsoft is organising a near repeat of the event in Europe at Amsterdam, London and Stockholm on 15th, 16th and 17th of January respectively. BizTalk Innovation Day renamed to BizTalk Summit 2013 […]
The post BizTalk Summit 2013, London. Brought to you by Microsoft + BizTalk360 appeared first on BizTalk360 Blog.
Blog Post by: Saravana Kumar
Sample Windows Azure Virtual Machines PowerShell Scripts
I sometimes show a platform that requires a bunch of Windows Azure virtual machines. It has 1 Active Directory domain controller (n123dc1), 3 SQL Server VMs for database mirroring (n123sql1, n123sql2, and n123sp20131 which also happens to have a SharePoint Server 2013 installed), and 2 members of a SharePoint 2012 Web Front End.
Between two demo sessions, I keep the VHD files in Windows Azure blob storage, as well as the virtual network because they don’t cost too much, but I don’t let the virtual machines deployed so that they don’t cost anything.
In order to restart the whole platform I use the following script (I slightly obfuscated one or two values).
#region init Import-Module 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1' $subscription = 'Azdem169B44999X' Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscription -CurrentStorageAccount 'storrageazure2' Set-AzureSubscription -DefaultSubscription $subscription $cloudSvcName = 'n123' #endregion #region DC $vmName='n123dc1' $disk0Name = 'n123dc1-n123dc1-0-20120912092405' $disk1Name = 'n123dc1-n123dc1-0-20120912105309' $vNetName = 'Network123' $subNet = 'DCSubnet' $vm1 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Name -InstanceSize ExtraSmall -Name $vmName -Label $vmName | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk1Name -Import -LUN 0 | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50101 New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $vm1 -VNetName $vNetName #endregion #region SQL Server $vmName='n123sql1' $disk0Name = 'n123dc1-n123sql1-0-20120912170111' $disk1Name = 'n123dc1-n123sql1-0-20120913074650' $disk2Name = 'n123dc1-n123sql1-1-20120913080403' $vNetName = 'Network123' $subNet = 'SQLSubnet' $availabilitySetName = 'SQL' $sqlvms = @() $vm1 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Name -InstanceSize Medium -Name $vmName -Label $vmName -AvailabilitySetName $availabilitySetName | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk1Name -Import -LUN 0 | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk2Name -Import -LUN 1 | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50604 | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 1433 -Name 'SQL' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 14330 $sqlvms += ,$vm1 $vmName='n123sql2' $disk0Name = 'n123-n123sql2-0-20121120105231' $disk1Name = 'n123-n123sql2-0-20121120144521' $disk2Name = 'n123-n123sql2-1-20121120145236' $vm2 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Name -InstanceSize Small -Name $vmName -Label $vmName -AvailabilitySetName $availabilitySetName | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk1Name -Import -LUN 0 | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk2Name -Import -LUN 1 | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50605 | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 1433 -Name 'SQL' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 14331 $sqlvms += ,$vm2 New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $sqlvms #endregion #region SharePoint $vmNamesp1='n123sp1' $vmNamesp2='n123sp2' $disk0Namesp1 = 'n123-n123sp1-2012-09-13' $disk0Namesp2 = 'n123-n123sp2-2012-09-13' $vNetName = 'Network123' $subNet = 'SharePointSubnet' $availabilitySetName = 'WFE' $spvms = @() $vm1 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Namesp1 -InstanceSize Small -Name $vmNamesp1 -Label $vmNamesp1 -AvailabilitySetName $availabilitySetName | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50704 | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 80 -Name 'HttpIn' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 80 -LBSetName "SPFarm" -ProbePort 80 -ProbeProtocol "http" -ProbePath "/probe/" $spvms += ,$vm1 $vm2 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Namesp2 -InstanceSize Small -Name $vmNamesp2 -Label $vmNamesp2 -AvailabilitySetName $availabilitySetName | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50705 | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 80 -Name 'HttpIn' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 80 -LBSetName "SPFarm" -ProbePort 80 -ProbeProtocol "http" -ProbePath "/probe/" $spvms += ,$vm2 New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $spvms #endregion #region SharePoint 2013 and SQL Server witness $vmName='n123sp20131' $disk0Name = 'n123-n123sp20131-0-20121120104314' $disk1Name ='n123-n123sp20131-0-20121120220458' $vNetName = 'Network123' $subNet = 'SP2013Subnet' $availabilitySetName = 'SQL' $vm1 = New-AzureVMConfig -DiskName $disk0Name -InstanceSize Small -Name $vmName -Label $vmName -AvailabilitySetName $availabilitySetName | Add-AzureDataDisk -DiskName $disk1Name -Import -LUN 0 | Set-AzureSubnet $subNet | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 3389 -Name 'RDP' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 50804 | Add-AzureEndpoint -LocalPort 80 -Name 'HttpIn' -Protocol tcp -PublicPort 8080 New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName -VMs $vm1 #endregion
In order to stop the whole platform, I use the following script:
#region init Import-Module 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1' $subscription = 'Azdem169B44999X' Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscription -CurrentStorageAccount 'storrageazure2' Set-AzureSubscription -DefaultSubscription $subscription $cloudSvcName = 'n123' #endregion #region shutdown and delete echo 'will shut down and remove the following' Get-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName | select name Get-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName | Stop-AzureVM Get-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName | Remove-AzureVM #endregion
In order to get started, I read Michael Washam’s blog.
Benjamin
Blog Post by: Benjamin GUINEBERTIERE
Setting up locally hosted HTML5 video
HTML5 Video is a great thing. There is a built in player in all of the major browsers, and ideally, it should be to throw a video on the page with the new video tag. No more outside hosting or struggling to get your flash player working inside your frames. Of course, the browsers still […]
Blog Post by: Karissa Wingate
BizTalk prerequisite files list (summary)
At a certain point in time when installing BizTalk, you will need to install some extra components. In the BizTalk installation wizard this is referred to as a prerequisite file.
This file can be downloaded automatically from within the wizard, but you might want to download them first. Here’s the list from BizTalk 2006 R2 up to BizTalk 2013 beta.
BizTalk deployment – How do YOU do it?
For the deployment of BizTalk applications we use a custom made tool within my company Cnext. Now I was curious to have some feedback from the community on the deployment of BizTalk applications. How do you handle the biztalk deployments at your company?
Our deployment manager tool is based on the idea to store all used objects in a database model (BizTalk artifacts, but also stuff like MSMQ, file locations, SQL objects, etc. ). Most of these objects are added using auto discovery of the BizTalk databases, so manually adding of objects is reduced to a minimum. Above all, BizTalk artifacts can have a different configuration (binding) defined per environment (test, dev, prod, ).
It also allows you to define all dependencies. Again most of these dependencies will be defined by the tool automatically.
This way of working makes it possible for the tool to define which actions need to be taken to deploy a certain application (or just a part of the application or only some objects). The deployment manager tool will defin which objects need to be removed and redeploy (also unenlisting/disabling en starting/enabling artifacts will be done by itself). As a result, using the tool will allow us to deploy much faster, because the objects to redeploy is reduced to an absolute minimum and now complete redeploy is needed (like BizTalk Deployment framework does for example).
Another very useful and much used functionality is the possibility to define complete business/functional flows, including some generic components. This makes sure you can also deploy or redeploy a complete (new) flow (like an order flow for example) by itself, including all necessary objects (as well receive as send ports, file locations, etc. ).
The deployment can be done cross BizTalk application. So the separation in applications is no longer deployment dependent.
The most important part is to set the database model correct en keep it this way this will guarantee a much easier and faster deployment, where each environment has its own version of the current deployed objects.
Please answer following questions:
- Is your BizTalk deployment automated (BizTalk deployment framework, custom scripting with MSBuild or BTSTask, powershell scripts, etc. ), or do you just do manual deployment using MSI and binding files?
- Which deployment tools or scripts are you using, or have you used before? And what are your thoughts of these tools (benefits and complaints)?
- What do you think of a tool like our custom deployment manager tool (using autodiscovery, etc. )?
Thanks for your replies.
When there is enough feedback, I’ll devote a new post on my analysis.