Welcome to the first of many posts around BizTalk Server 2009 R2, the latest version of BizTalk Server that is scheduled for release later this year.
As many times before, CODit is again part of the TAP (Technology Adoption Program). In this serie, I will create a post for each new feature in this version.
This post will probably the less interesting one: installation and configuration 🙂
The 2009 R2 version can be installed on the latest available platform: Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and .Net 4.0. Therefore, I decided to take the latest available releases for all these products and install them on my Virtual PC.
Windows Server 2008 R2.
First issue: the Windows Server 2008 R2 version will only be available in a x64 build. While this makes perfectly sense (who configures a 32bit server nowadays?), it raised an issue for me.
I am using Virtual PC as the virtualization software on my development laptop. But VPC does not support hosting x64 operating systems. Microsoft makes this only available through Hyper-V. But since I am testing on my laptop, I don’t want to install Hyper-V, which would make me lose my ‘stand-by’/’sleep’ features.
Therefore, the only options left were VMWare or Sun VirtualBox. I decided to take the last one.
After the installation of Windows, it became clear that a lot of the Windows 7 UI features made it in the Windows 2008 R2 release, which is cool.
SQL Server 2008 R2.
For installation of SQL Server, I installed the November CTP release. Installation went smoothly. New features like StreamInsight and Master Data Services are not available through the standard setup wizard. They need to be installed through a seperate MSI on the DVD.
Visual Studio 2010.
Installing the 2010 RC version of Visual Studio went fine, during the deep-dive sessions we had in Redmond, we already had a chance to play with it, so nothing shocking here…
BizTalk Server 2009 R2.
In the setup features, there are no new features available at first sight:
I closely followed the installation of BizTalk Server and there was only one thing that looked new to me: we finally have a download/progressbar for the prerequisites cab. I know of too many customers who just stopped the installation of one of the previous versions of BizTalk, while it was downloading the cab-file. Finally we have visibility on this:
The configuration of BizTalk hasn’t changed at all. No new features or sub-features are available in the Configuration Wizard. So, next thing after install will be to find out where the new features like the settings dashboard and trading partner management will be…
Part 2: the new and enhanced BizTalk mapper.