by Lattetapriyanka Vishu | Mar 5, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We are delighted to inform you that BizTalk360 Stop Alerts for maintenance capability is enhanced, and it is renamed as “Schedule Maintenance”. As we know BizTalk360 keeps up its standard by improvising the existing feature and implements new functionality into it in a way that eases the user experience to the next level.
At present in BizTalk360, the user can only set immediate maintenance schedules. In the upcoming release, users will be able to create immediate maintenance, one-time maintenance and recurrence maintenance associating the business holiday calendar. In recurrence maintenance, users can create daily, weekly and monthly recurrence.
Importance of Having Maintenance
Software maintenance is a part of the Software Development Life Cycle. Its main purpose is to modify and update software applications after delivery to correct faults and to improve the performance of the system. It is a very broad activity that takes place soon after the development completed. It optimizes the system’s performance by reducing errors, eliminating useless development and applying advanced development.
In the BizTalk Server, you may have regular maintenance implemented depending on resource availability/skill-set and organizational focus based on the following cases,
- BizTalk Message Box Health Maintenance
- BizTalk Performance Tuning
- Management of BizTalk Server versioning, hotfixes, and service packs
- Verification of source code location and management
- BizTalk Security Lockdown
- BizTalk Source Code Control
- Configuration of BizTalk Test Environment
- Establishment of rules for proper BizTalk Server Administration, Release Management, Operations Management, Development Management, and Database Management
Why Schedule Maintenance is Implemented in BizTalk360?
BizTalk360 allows you to set up monitoring on application artifacts and allows you to auto-correct artifacts that have hit an unexpected state. During day to day operations, it is very helpful to have this monitoring in place as it saves the BizTalk administrator(s) a lot of time because they don’t have to do that monitoring manually. However, there are also times that you don’t want this monitoring to be active. Thinking of the scenario during maintenance windows because of deployments or installation of security patches. In such cases you may need to temporarily stop monitoring, BizTalk360 provides a feature called ‘Stop Alerts for Maintenance’, which enabled the user to set up a single maintenance window.
Enriched Schedule Maintenance Functionality
The latest BizTalk360 will hold the enriched form of stop alerts for maintenance that is nothing but the schedule maintenance. In which you can set the following maintenance,
- Immediate maintenance
- One-Time maintenance
- Recurrence maintenance
Note: Even if the system is set for maintenance you may need to get alerts for any of the configured artifacts. In such case BizTalk360 ease you with the so-called field “Exclude alarm” in the general maintenance configuration part. Select the alarm for which you wanted to receive the alert even under maintenance.
Immediate Maintenance
Immediate maintenance is used to set the maintenance from the current time (by enabling the immediate toggle button) till the end date and end time which is set.
Let’s consider a couple of scenarios where the BizTalk Server need immediate maintenance,
- The running BizTalk Server or services go down
- The BizTalk application does not function as expected
In this case, if your infrastructure is unhealthy, then you need to undergo maintenance on a swift to bring the BizTalk environment up and healthy. At the same time, you (based on the business impact there is a customer, who holds 200 plus alarms under an environment) would have configured alarm for monitoring the artifacts in the corresponding environment. So that the alarm will keep triggering the alerts as per the configuration. Since the environment itself is down the alarms will meet the threshold condition and will start sending the violation alerts, as the same health alarm and data monitoring alarm will be sending the alert too.
In addition to it, if an alarm holds Autocorrect then the auto-correct functionality will try to push the artifacts to match the expected state, due to which the down alert will be sent, which may lead to full your inbox with BizTalk360 alerts.
To avoid such a situation, you can set the immediate maintenance just by enabling the toggle and based on the maintenance prominence you can set the end date & time. So that the BizTalk360 monitoring service will no longer perform the autocorrect and will not send. At this point in time, you can set the immediate maintenance which prevents the monitoring service from sending the alerts for the environment.
One-Time Maintenance
By using the One-Time maintenance, you can able to schedule/plan your future maintenance period in advance. For scheduling the One-Time maintenance click on the One-Time in the selection bar and set the Start date and start time when you wanted to get the maintenance enabled in BizTalk360 and set the end date and time when you wanted your maintenance to stop.
Say for instance, if your BizTalk server going to progress on a continuous integration approach and effective deployment then this process may take about a day or two based on the impact of the application going to get deployed and it will be a pre-planned approach which BizTalk Server undergoes. For which you can set the maintenance schedule in advance using our One-Time maintenance in BizTalk360.
Note: BizTalk360 will allow you to set the span across days for One-Time and Recurrence maintenance as shown in the below figure.
Recurrence Maintenance
In general, you might be aware of Administrative Maintenance in BizTalk Server, which is maintenance checks should be performed on a BizTalk Server system on a routine basis as part of a preventive maintenance program. Performing the checks will help you determine whether there are reliability, administration, security, or performance issues with the system.
BizTalk suggest best practices for Administrative Maintenance as below,
Considering the Administrative Maintenance in BizTalk Server, Recurrence Maintenance has been implemented as an icing on the cake in Schedule Maintenance. Recurrence maintenance is a type of maintenance which allows you to create maintenance once, and then have it recreated automatically after a designated time interval. You can make any existing maintenance into recurring maintenance by simply using the recurrence button at the top of the task window. It will let the maintenance run in BizTalk360 between the Start Date -Start Time and End Date – End Time set, during which the monitoring service will stop sending the alert for the corresponding environment.
Recurrence maintenance comes with the following maintenance possibilities,
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly- Date of the Month & Day of the Week
Recurrence Maintenance – Daily
Maintenance will be set daily on stipulated the start and end time and based on the recur value set, the maintenance will be running on an alternative day, i.e. if the recurring value is set as 2, the maintenance will run 2 days once and so on.
Let us consider that if BizTalk360 sends an alert message during the non-business hours, the message would get piled up in your inbox. So that you may tend to miss any important alert which may have a huge business impact. As a solution to it, you can set the Daily maintenance during the non-business hours which will relieve you from this great mess.
Recurrence Maintenance – Weekly
Maintenance will be set weekly on stipulated the start and end time and based on the recur value set, the maintenance will be running on the alternative selected week, i.e. if the recurring value is set as 3, the maintenance will run 3 weeks once and so on. Say, for instance, If the recurring value is set to 3 and on days is set to Monday and Thursday, then by calculating the start date checks for the next 3rd occurrence Monday and will set BizTalk360 into maintenance mode. As the same checks for 3rd occurrence Thursday and the next 3rd occurrence Monday from that day on and goes on and on till the end date set.
Recurrence maintenance – Monthly
Maintenance will be set monthly on the desired start and end time. By choosing the monthly recurrence you can set maintenance in the below two combination
- Date of the Month
- Day of the Week
Date of the Month: Maintenance will be running regularly on the corresponding date of month which is chosen in the Date and Months field. Say for instance, if the month field provided with February, April, June and date field is provided with 2, 29 then BizTak360 will calculate the current date (e.g. 25-02-2020) based on which the maintenance will run on February 29 (only for leap year if not it will consider next cycle on April 2) on the maintenance gets completed it will calculate the next cycle April 2 and so on.
Day of the Week: Maintenance will be running regularly on the week of the month that is chosen on the month’s field. Wherein day of the week recurrence, you can able to precisely set the weekly maintenance i.e. if you want to create recurring maintenance repeating on 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month. However, you can select the month FEB, APR and days e.g. 1st & 3rd WED. So that the maintenance will run on every 1st and 3rd WED of the selected month.
Schedule Audit History
Adding a feather to the crown, BizTalk360 provides you audit functionality for Schedule maintenance. Keeping the core impact of the maintenance in concern audit for the below action is provided,
- Create
- Update
- Delete
- Stop
- Completed
As we know the importance of having maintenance in BizTalk360. It is always a good habit to keep the maintenance in a track so that you can able to know who had set/edited/stop/deleted the maintenance for what cause.
Note: Only the superuser is permitted to take control over the schedule maintenance
Note: When the maintenance is set, BizTalk360 will show the maintenance alert pop up in the operation and monitoring home dashboard and you can able to stop the maintenance from the home screen of operation and monitor section just by clicking on the “Stop Maintenance” button in which you can also provide the reason in the popup for stopping the maintenance same will be audited in the schedule audit history.
Conclusion
We can assure the new improvements in the schedule maintenance capability will give you smooth control over BizTalk360 monitoring during the infrastructure maintenance. Why not, give BizTalk360 a try! It takes about 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your own BizTalk Environments.
The post Schedule Maintenance to Stop Alerts in BizTalk360 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Archana Sukumaran | Feb 27, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We are happy to announce that BizTalk360 extends its support to monitor Cluster NT services. Currently, you can monitor the cluster SQL server components like Disk, system resources, event logs.
Consider this scenario, the Clustered SQL server is running under node 1 and the cluster NT service “Enterprise single sign-on” is running under node 2. Before, we cannot monitor clustered NT services through BizTalk360. As we are valuing each customer request, we brought this capability in BizTalk360 based on customer feedback.
Clustered NT Service in SQL Server
Through Failover Clustering, you can make almost anything highly available. This does not only include programs and applications, but you can make any windows service running on the cluster highly available – even if it is custom or from a 3rd party. These can be created, managed by and integrated with Failover Clustering using the Generic Service resource type. Generic Service resource type allows us to manage Windows Services as cluster resources.
Consider that, one service is identified as the active node which is running the production workload, and the other is a passive node. If the active node fails, the passive node becomes the active node and begins to run the operation with some minimal failover downtime and without any distraction. BizTalk Server admins/support people find this would be a cumbersome task to monitor the clustered NT services every time through RDP connection to all servers. To make their support life easy, we have implemented this feature in BizTalk360.
From now on, you can monitor those generic windows service in BizTalk360.
How to Configure Clustered Windows Services in BizTalk360?
In BizTalk360, you can monitor the Clustered Windows Services which is configured as a Generic type.
From this version, you can add SQL server Network Friendly Name or Physical Node separately in the monitoring and notification section. When you added the Network Friendly name then there is no need to add the physical cluster node. BizTalk360 will monitor both nodes under the Network Friendly name.
If you are monitoring Physical Node, where you can directly add a Physical Node for monitoring through which you can able to view the services which are available under the Physical Node.
Using Network Friendly Name
Using Physical Node
When the SQL server network Friendly Name is added (Settings->Monitoring and notification->SQL Servers for monitoring) for monitoring, then the active and passive nodes will get listed in the grid (nodes) column. BizTalk360 intelligently will pick up the active node and start monitoring. For easy reference to the user, the currently active node is highlighted in green color as per the below screenshot.
When you have added the network Friendly Name then there is no need to add the physical cluster node names. BizTalk360 will monitor both nodes under the network Friendly Name.
If you are monitoring Physical Node, where you can directly add a Physical Node for monitoring through which you can able to view the services which are available under the Physical Node.
Monitoring the Clustered Windows Services in BizTalk360
BizTalk360 allows users to monitor the Clustered NT service using the option “AtleastOneActive” state.
If this state is assigned as the Expected State, then the monitoring service will verify that at least one service is active, guaranteeing that the service is running in another node and no downtime happened.
From this version, as additional information, we have added the Server name and Clustered option in the grid view. It is useful to easily filter the clustered and non-clustered services. So that, we can easily filter and identify the clustered and non-clustered services.
For Cluster NT Service
You can monitor both clustered and non- clustered services under network Friendly Names or Physical Nodes. Non clustered service in the same network Friendly name will appear as per the below screenshot.
Only for clustered SQL Server and BizTalk Server, the server name/ clustered column will visible.
Setting up the “AtleastOneActive” State in Clustered NT service
The user can set the “AtleastOneActive” state only for clustered NT service in a high availability environment. You must select both active and passive window services for setting the “AtleastOneActive” as it is clustered NT service.
The “AtleastOneActive” state will monitor the configured NT services and will check if anyone of the NT service is active. It will check for anyone of the NT service is up and running. In case if both the clustered NT service is down then it will send the exception alert as below :
Consider that, if you are configuring the AtleastOneActive state for Clustered NT service. When suddenly, one service’s expected state changed to Running or stopped state. Then BizTalk360 automatically updated the expected state as “Do not monitor”.
AutoCorrect Functionality in Clustered NT Service
AutoCorrect is one of the best features in BizTalk360. It helps you to get relief from a manual effort by auto-starting the services if it goes down.
For example, if you have 2 services under node 1 and node 2 respectively. From 2 services, any one of the services needs to be in the active state for performing the auto-correct operation. It’s a tedious task for the admin/support people to start the services manually if both of them go down. To overcome this problem, autocorrect functionality is the best solution.
In the case of clustered service, autocorrect needs to be enabled for all the services in different nodes. If all the services are down, from the next monitoring cycle BizTalk360 will try to auto-heal any one of the services. On the first attempt, it will try to start the service in node 1. If the service is started successfully then it skips autocorrecting in node 2. This happens vice versa if node 1 fails to start. BizTalk360 will try to start any one of the services until it reaches the maximum attempt count. You can also reset the auto-correct by setting the reset interval.
Autocorrect functionality can be set for both clustered and non-clustered services.
For AtleastOneActive, if we configure autocorrect for node 1. Then it automatically replicates to node 2.
Monitoring the Clustered NT Services in BizTalk Server
BizTalk Server as well has both clustered and non-clustered NT services. However, monitoring them doesn’t need any special configuration in BizTalk360.
For example, enterprise SSO is a critical part of the overall Microsoft BizTalk Server infrastructure because BizTalk Server uses SSO to help secure information for the receive locations and provides services to store and transmit encrypted user credentials across local and network boundaries, including domain boundaries. SSO stores the credentials in the SSO database. Because SSO provides a generic single sign-on solution, middleware applications and custom adapters can leverage SSO to securely store and transmit user credentials across the environment.
if an SSO server fails, and if you have other BizTalk Server computers (and therefore SSO servers) running the same host instance, the other SSO servers continue doing their work. This means that the master secret server still functions correctly, and therefore the BizTalk Server processing continues.
Today’s dynamic business environment demands such flexibility because of workload fluctuations.
Consider a scenario if node A has an “Enterprise Single sign-on” service which is configured for monitoring. Let say, node A went down, then BizTalk360 will automatically pick up the currently active node B for monitoring the “Enterprise Single sign-on” service. BizTalk360 will help us in getting efficient work, flexibility and will not lose any information during Failover scenarios.
As like SQL Server Clustered NT Service monitoring. BizTalk360 extends its capability for BizTalk Servers NT services as well.
Conclusion
BizTalk360 will always work from the customer’s feedback. Clustered NT service is the best solution for many failover scenarios. The upcoming version of BizTalk360 will ease your way of monitoring the Clustered NT service in the SQL server and the BizTalk Server.
The post Monitoring Clustered NT Services with BizTalk360 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Lex Hegt | Jan 27, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
At our annual event Integrate, Microsoft announced last year that BizTalk Server 2020 should have released in the first quarter of 2019. Only two weeks in the new year, Microsoft has released BizTalk Server 2020 (v3.13.717.0)! In this blog, we want to update you on what’s new in this version of the product.
No Changes in Available Editions
Similar to earlier versions of the product, BizTalk Server 2020 comes in 4 flavors:
- Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Developer
- Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Branch
- Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Standard [to do: changed limitations]
- Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Enterprise
You can download these products when you have an Enterprise MSDN account.
New Features in BizTalk Server 2020
During Integrate 2019, Paul Larsen, the Program Manager who is responsible for BizTalk Server, already highlighted which new features are coming in BizTalk Server 2020. You can read a recap about Paul’s session here.
As you can understand from Paul’s session, we were already expecting platform alignment. More importantly, BizTalk Server 2020 contains all features from BizTalk Server 2016, including the 3 Feature Packs, which have been released.
You can find the complete set of new features here
But, let’s have a look at some of the new features and capabilities.
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Support for newer platforms
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BizTalk Server 2020 adds support for the following Microsoft platforms:
– Visual Studio 2019
– Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows 10
– SQL Server 2019, SQL Server 2017, SQL Server 2016 SP2
– Office 2019, Office 2016
Hardware and Software Requirements for BizTalk Server 2020
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Analytics
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Operational Data Monitoring and Analytics.
Leverage the power of Azure (Application Insight and Event Hub) for deep data storage and Power BI for reporting and viewing of data.
Send tracking data to Azure
Configure data feed for Power BI
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Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS
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Using Visual Studio Team Services, you can define multi-server deployments of BizTalk Server 2020, and then maintain those systems throughout the application lifecycle.
Configure automatic deployment using VSTS
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Management APIs
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Manage your environment remotely using the new REST APIs with full Swagger support.
REST API reference
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Advanced Scheduling
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New and improved scheduling capabilities in Adapters.
Configure time zone and recurrence
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Backup to Azure Blob Storage
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When deploying BizTalk Server to Azure VMs, you can backup BizTalk Server databases to Azure blob storage.
Configure the Backup Job
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Event Hubs Adapter
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Using the new Event Hub Adapter, BizTalk Server can send and receive messages with Azure Event Hubs, where BizTalk Server can function as both an event publisher and subscriber, as part of a new Azure cloud-based event-driven application.
Event Hubs adapter
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Office 365 Adapters
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Leverage the power of BizTalk in newer office automation workflows by integrating with Adapters that allow you to send or receive Office 365 emails, receive or transmit Office 365 calendar events, and create Office 365 contacts.
Office 365 Outlook Email adapter
Office 365 Outlook Calendar adapter
Office 365 Outlook Contact adapter
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Group Managed Service Accounts
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Extend windows GMSA support to BizTalk operations and services.
Using Group Managed Service Account
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Audit Log
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Making BizTalk further secure by maintaining audit trails of all management operations.
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New Read-Only Operator role
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Brand new read-only operator role in facilitating the dev-ops model, where access to production stamp is provided without the ability to update anything.
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Additional updates
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· Move to new long term supported Microsoft OLEDB Driver for SQL Server
· Support for SSO Affiliate applications in the SFTP adapter
· SQL Availability Group support for BAM DTS Package via SSIS Catalog
· Partially disabled receive locations
· Throughput improvements for Dynamic Send Ports with Ordered Delivery
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Deprecated and Removed Features
Some features of the product are deprecated or removed from the product. Here’s the list:
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Program
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Status
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Replacement
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Samples
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Removed
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Removed from BizTalk Server installation
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POP3 and SMTP adapters
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Deprecated
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Office 365 adapters
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Support for ACS authentication in adapters
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Removed
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SAS authentication
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SOAP adapter
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Deprecated
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WCF-BasicHttp Adapter
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Old SQL adapter
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Removed
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WCF-SQL Adapter
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BPEL support
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Deprecated
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None
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JDE OneWorld adapter
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Deprecated
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None
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OWC redist
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Removed
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None
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BAM Portal
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Deprecated
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None
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WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter
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Deprecated
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None
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Changes that Catch the Eye
Based on the above lists, and besides the already expected features and improvements, a few features catch the eye.
Audit Log
Until now, no auditing was available for any operations performed against the BizTalk environment. Luckily, from BizTalk Server 2020 on, the Administration console provides auditing of operations. To be able to use this feature, you will have to turn it on in the Group Settings screen.
The auditing data is stored in the Management database, and you can access it via the Operational Services. At the moment, the supported operations are:
- Creating, updating and deleting ports
- Suspending, resuming and terminating service instances
- Adding, updating and removing BizTalk applications
- Importing binding files
Although this is a good start, multiple important operations are still missing; think of starting/stopping of ports, orchestrations, and host instances. We hope that Microsoft adds such operations in the future.
Read more about this feature here.
Support of .NET Framework v4.7
Earlier, Microsoft has announced that .NET 4.8 will be supported.
New Read-Only Operator role
The BizTalk Operator role has changed. Where before, it was possible to perform actions like stopping/starting ports and changing the port configuration, this role is now completely read-only. This can certainly be useful for facilitating DevOps scenarios.
When accessing the BizTalk Server 2020 Admin console as a BizTalk Operator, all the operations are still accessible. However, when an operator tries, for example, to stop a port, an error message shows up, and the operation becomes blocked. Unfortunately, the error message is not always clear that the operation is blocked due to insufficient permissions.
BAM Portal is Deprecated
Microsoft has decided to deprecate the BAM portal. Probably due to the new capabilities to push data to Azure, they decided to deprecate the old-fashioned BAM portal. In case you are using BAM, and you are considering upgrading to BizTalk Server 2020, you can still install and configure the BAM portal from the BizTalk installer and configuration wizard; you won’t be left in the dark.
Deprecated and Removed Adapters
Multiple updates in this area as well. For example, Microsoft deprecates the POP3 and the SMTP adapters in favor of the Office 365 adapters, which appeared in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs. Next, the old SQL adapter has been removed and replaced by the WCF-SQL adapter, and the JDE OneWorld and the WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter have both been deprecated.
BizTalk360 Support of BizTalk Server 2020
The BizTalk360 product team has eagerly followed the developments around BizTalk Server 2020, and we are glad that BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. For BizTalk360, it is evident that the product must support all recent versions of BizTalk Server.
That’s why we made the latest released versions of BizTalk360 and Atomic Scope compatible with BizTalk Server 2020!
Conclusion
BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. This is the 11th version of the product since its inception in 2000. Although we have already seen most of the features of this release (in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs), this is still a useful release. Especially when you are still on versions older than BizTalk Server 2016, it will certainly be worth upgrading or migrating to this release.
The post What’s new in BizTalk Server 2020! appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Praveena Jayanarayanan | Jan 14, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
BizTalk360 Product Support – Every year brings a new learning and new experience. We receive support tickets through different channels like emails, support portal, feedback widget. It is the responsibility of every support engineer to make sure the support case is taken care of and resolved on time, thereby aiming for 100 % customer satisfaction.
2019, of course, was a better year than before. A lot of customer relationship calls, best practice sessions, customer demos and much more. We are happy to share the stats of the support cases handled by us in 2019. This is the result of our continuous hard work and dedication which has resulted in some really positive numbers in BizTalk360 Customer Support.
- Total tickets received for technical product support – 1274
- No of tickets closed – 1064
- Nearly 75% of the tickets resolved within SLA
- January and September were busiest months which had the highest number of tickets received
Customer Satisfaction Report
This is another interesting factor which helps to know the rating of customer satisfaction. For every support ticket that is getting closed, there is a customer survey that gets attached to the closure response where they rate the resolution provided by the support engineers.
The rating may be awesome, neutral or disappointed. The customers can provide their comments as per the resolution provided. The customer satisfaction reports help us improve our support based on the ratings and comments that we receive from the customers. This report is taken every week. We are happy to inform that most of the responses we received were of ‘Awesome’ rating and very few had the other ratings.
Here are some of the customer quotes the BizTalk360 Support team has received in the past few months:
“Your support is amazing. It will definitely be a selling point here :-).”
“Fantastic support. Thank you!”
“Thanks for the quick and effective solution for monitoring this scenario. It is working for us. Really appreciate it!”
“Felt good to get a resolution which exactly solved our problem 
well done “
“Quick, friendly and very knowledgeable support! very happy with the service :)”
These kinds of comments motivate us to do more and thereby providing the best customer support.
Here is a one such customer satisfaction report:
Major Releases in 2019
The feedback portal is one place where the customers can provide their suggestions and valuable feedback on the features that they already use and also features that they expect in BizTalk360. It is based on these feedback and customer votes; the features are selected for every release.
In 2019, we had 5 major releases, 8.9.5, 8.9.6, 9.0 Phase 1, 2 and 3.
For the list of new features and enhancements shipped in each release, refer to the release notes.
Some of the highlighting features added in 2019 are:
- SQL cluster monitoring
- Clustered host instance monitoring
- Dynatrace integration for Analytics
- BizTalk360 Activities Auditing
- BizTalk Group Dashboard
- Configuring polling interval for monitoring
- Database size monitoring
- SMTP Notification channel
- Quick alarm configuration
For more details on the top 10 features in 2019, refer to the link. Also, the release includes enhancements as well as bug fixes. We always recommend the customers to upgrade to the latest version so that they are in line with our releases. This will avoid the issues with the product and helps us in the support as well.
In addition to the CR calls, to help customers in all aspects and understand their challenges, the client relationship team introduced the Quarterly health check session this year. In this session, we, the technical support engineers, would assist the customers in the upgrade process if they require assistance and understand their challenges in using BizTalk360 and provide resolutions.
This makes us understand the customers’ expectations better and help in improving the product to cater to the needs of the customer. As the saying goes, ‘Every ending has a new beginning’, the end of 2019 has brought us new lessons and experiences with various customers and new processes. Every support case has a lesson in it, be it the customer scenario, their infrastructure settings or our way of troubleshooting the case, our responses. We make sure that we improve our support, thereby making our customers happy and working more efficiently.
As part of the customer services, we also have the on-site BizTalk360 consultancy. Sometimes it would be more convenient to speak to somebody in person and with your BizTalk environment at hand. For such scenarios, we provide our customers with the opportunity to have an experienced BizTalk360 Product Consultant visit you at your premises.
The client relationship calls done every quarter helps us understand the pain points of the customers and the most used features in BizTalk360. The resolutions would be provided immediately in the call if possible or separate tickets would be raised for the issues so that it would be easy for tracking.
In 2020
2020 is, of course, going to be a very great year, with no doubt at all, the important reason being BizTalk 2020 will be announced by Microsoft which in turn sets the pace for the new features to be included in BizTalk360.
The most awaited event in the Microsoft Integration space, Integrate2020 is on the way. The dates and venues are finalized. Grab the early bird offer which ends by March 31st, 2020.
We have an upcoming webinar on “BizTalk360 Product v9.x product walkthrough”. Please register for the same here. More webinars to come on the way.
Conclusion
We would like to request you, our customers, so please take the time to fill this questionnaire. This helps us to prioritize the next upcoming feature tasks and will let us know what your main pain points are. In case of any queries, you can always write to [email protected], so that we can immediately get your queries answered and resolve the issues. Happy monitoring with BizTalk360!
Every ending has a new beginning. Let’s hope and pray for 2020 to bring loads of wonders and happiness.
The post A Look Back on the BizTalk360 Technical Support 2019 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Lex Hegt | Jan 9, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In 2019, we released multiple major versions of BizTalk360. We have always believed that listening to the requests of our customers and partners is the right way to evolve the product. Many of the new features and improvements in the most actual version of the product have been suggested by our customers. So, we decided to organize a webinar to showcase the most appealing new features and improvements in the product.
Date: Wednesday 22nd of January
Time: 10 AM to 11 AM GMT (London)
Overview of some of the most important updates in BizTalk360 v9.x
It is interesting to see, that although over the last 8 years, we have brought over 60 releases, there are still areas where we can improve in the product. When looking at the v9.X updates we have released in 2019, the most recent version of the product contains 11 new features, 25 improvements, and 30 bug fixes. During the webinar, we will show the most interesting of these features in detail. Some of the features we brought are in the following areas:
- Monitoring and notification – SQL Server cluster monitoring, database size monitoring, a new BizTalk Group dashboard, configurable polling intervals, a new Notification Channel
- Operations – Querying Subscriptions, Send Port Group operations
- Analytics – APM integrations (AppDynamics, Dynatrace), Reporting improvements, data collection optimization
Does this sound interesting? It doesn’t stop here! Join the webinar to learn about other new capabilities in BizTalk360!
How does BizTalk360 help our customers?
Meanwhile, we have around 600 customers all over the world and we believe that we are doing a good job in helping them efficiently manage their BizTalk environments. But why should you just take our word for it?
That’s why we have invited representatives from a BizTalk360 customer and a partner to be a part of our webinar.
During the webinar, we will interview them, enabling them to share their experiences with BizTalk360. Please find a short introduction about both below.
The customer, UWV (Netherlands), is an organization around social security. They might just have the largest BizTalk Server platform in The Netherlands. UWV is using BizTalk360 for a few years now. We have invited Hans Knaap, a senior administrator at UWV, to share his experiences with the product.
The partner, Integration.Team, is one of the major Belgian consultancy companies in the area of Microsoft integration. During the webinar, we will talk to Jordy Maes, who is a BizTalk360 Product Specialist for multiple years meanwhile. He has done multiple implementations of BizTalk360 at his customers.
Join us at the Webinar!
The webinar will be hosted by two of our senior Product Consultants, who have years of experience in the area of BizTalk Server and BizTalk360. This tandem will be able not just to show how the new capabilities look like, they will also share how they can be used in day-to-day practice.
Do you want to join us at the webinar on January 22nd? Why wait! Registration is simple, just click the below banner and leave your details. We are looking forward to welcoming you during the webinar.
The post Webinar Spoiler: BizTalk360 v9. X Product Walkthrough appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Saranya Ramakrishnan | Jan 6, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In BizTalk360, we have a practice of releasing new versions with significant features in every quarter. In 2019, we have released 4 major versions. In this blog, you can get to know about the top 10 stimulating features we have shipped in 2019.
1. Send Port Group Operations and Monitoring
You can completely manage and monitor your Send Port Groups from BizTalk360.
Operations – Send Port Groups can be Start/Stop/Enlist/Unenlist from BizTalk360. With this capability, it is possible to manage the operation of BizTalk applications (Start & Stop) for all the artifacts of each application in BizTalk360.
Monitoring – Create an alarm, map the Send Port Groups for monitoring by setting up the expected state. If any threshold violation occurs, you will be notified. You can also setup auto-healing for this monitoring; once the Send Port Group goes down, then BizTalk360 will try to auto-heal it to the expected state.
This implementation makes life easier for the BizTalk support engineers without context switching between the BizTalk admin console and BizTalk360.
2. Database Size Monitoring
Database Size monitoring helps to monitor the Data and log file size of the BizTalk and BizTalk360 databases, by simply configuring the error and warning threshold values for the database and log file sizes.
Below are the BizTalk databases that can be monitor using BizTalk360:
- BizTalkDTADb
- BizTalkMgmtDb
- BizTalkMsgBoxDb
- BizTalkRuleEngineDb
- BAM databases (BAMPrimaryImport, BAMAlertsApplication, BAMArchive, BAMStarSchema)
- SSODB
3. SQL Server Cluster Monitoring
Cluster SQL Server can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server Network name. BizTalk360 will start monitoring the currently active node. In case of a failover, BizTalk360 will automatically take the active server for monitoring.
The following resources can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server:
- CPU & Memory
- NT Services
- Disks (available disk space)
- Event Logs
4. Host Instance Monitoring
BizTalk Host Instances(clustered/non clustered ) can be monitored by setting the Expected State as started/stopped/AtleastoneActive. An alert will get triggered if there is a mismatch between the expected and current state of the host instance.
The state AtleastOneActive will guarantee that at least one host instance is running and no downtime happened for that host/server.
You can also enable AutoCorrect for Clustered and Non-Clustered host instances monitoring.
5. Configurable Polling Interval for Monitoring
By default, the BizTalk360 monitoring service checks the status of all configured artifacts every 1 min. However, BizTalk360 provides an option for the user to configure the polling interval. Based on the configured polling interval, the monitoring service will determine the monitor status of the endpoints.
6. SMTP Notification Channel
The SMTP Notification Channel provides an ability to create email distribution lists by grouping email ids based on the business needs.
Easily using the same email recipients for multiple alarms was not possible in earlier versions; the recipient’s details need to be entered for each alarm. To overcome this, we have introduced the SMTP Notification channel, through which the user can configure email distribution lists under one channel and can be mapped to multiple alarms. In addition to this, we have added email grouping for Up Alert and AutoCorrect Alert. With this, the user can configure different email ids to receive Up and AutoCorrect alerts.
7. BizTalk Group Dashboard
In BizTalk360’s Monitoring dashboard it was not possible to view the status of all the mapped artifacts in a single view; the user needed to change the alarm each and every time to view the status of the mapped artifacts of each alarm.
To overcome this challenge, we have introduced the BizTalk Group Dashboard which gives a consolidated view of the status of all the artifacts which are mapped to all the alarms in an environment.
The “BizTalk Group Dashboard” will automatically pick up all the artifacts (which are mapped to any of the BizTalk360 alarms) and displays the status of the artifacts in a graphical manner. Also, the error/warning details of the displayed artifacts are shown in a grid view.
8. Subscriptions (Message Box)
In addition, to retrieve the service instance and message details, BizTalk360 allows users to execute queries to retrieve the details of the subscription from the message box database. The subscription details such as Name, Service Name, state, subscription type, service instance id will be retrieved on message box query execution.
9. APM Integration
BizTalk360 is a one-stop tool for operations, monitoring and application performance management (APM) of BizTalk environments.
We get to see a few of our customers utilizing modern SaaS-based Application Monitoring/Analytics platforms like New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, etc., for their global enterprise analytics/monitoring requirements.
To support that we have integrated the following tools in BizTalk360.
- NewRelic
- AppDynamic (new)
- Dynatrace (new)
BizTalk360 Analytics service will start pushing the BizTalk performance data to your environment. With this, you can see the BizTalk server related performance metrics such as BizTalk/SQL Server health, Host Performance, BizTalk Messaging Performance, Throttling Performance, etc., in AppDynamics and DynaTrace environment.
10. Analytics Data Collection Optimization
We have fine-tuned the performance in analytics data collection. To improve the performance and tracking data collection we are providing an option for the user to select the required performance counters on each type. This way, BizTalk360 will start collecting data only for the selected counters.
Reporting Improvements
BizTalk360 provides the option for users to be able to generate PDF documents of critical performance metrics at specific time periods depending on the business.
In BizTalk Reporting, we have introduced an additive widget called Custom SQL Query widget through which SQL queries can be mapped to get the top 100 query result as a report based on the scheduled configuration.
In addition to this, we have extended our support for Analytics custom widget. With this, you can retrieve performance metrics of the BizTalk environment such as Messaging Performance, Message Transmission failure rate, Server performance, etc., and the SQL Query results as a report. Based on the configured schedule you can receive that report in your email box.
Conclusion
Considering the feedback from our customers, BizTalk360 will continue to provide more useful features. Why not give BizTalk360 a try! It takes about 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your own BizTalk Environments.
The post Top 10 Features of BizTalk360 Released in 2019 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Sivaramakrishnan Arumugam | Jan 3, 2020 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Working in Kovai.co provides a lot of opportunities to learn and explore new things. I’m sure within Kovai.co your job role doesn’t decide your day to day work routine. Click here to know more about the work culture. Recently we had an opportunity to work in Microsoft Azure Marketplace and interestingly we came across a new case related to IIS configuration.
In this blog, I’m going to share my experience in creating a Marketplace installer for BizTalk360 and how we solved the challenge.
Different ways to install BizTalk360
There are various deployment choices for BizTalk360. To fulfill all the customer needs, there are several ways to install BizTalk360 and we provide different types of installer options:
For an overview please check here.
Before going to the problem, I would like to provide a brief insight into Microsoft Azure Marketplace and how to create an Azure Marketplace installer, since the problem appeared while creating Marketplace.
Microsoft Azure Marketplace
The Microsoft Azure Marketplace is an online store that offers applications and services either built on or designed to integrate with Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform.
The products and services offered through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace come from either Microsoft or its technology partners.
Before they become available for purchase on the Marketplace, all services and products are certified through the Microsoft Azure Certified program to ensure compatibility with the Azure public cloud.
BizTalk360 in Azure Marketplace
BizTalk360 on Azure Marketplace is suitable for customers having a full-blown setup in the cloud, such as a domain setup, Active Directory and one or more BizTalk environments running within the network. In this scenario, customers can download BizTalk360 from the Marketplace. BizTalk360 will run independently in its own virtual machine environment and will connect to all the available BizTalk environments available in the same network.
So, our task is to make BizTalk360 support the BizTalk Server 2016 installations on Microsoft Azure. For this, we must provision a complete virtual machine for the BizTalk server 2016 along with the pre-requisites to install BizTalk360. To know more about the BizTalk360 Azure marketplace installer please check here.
Create a user VM Image
Since it’s a vast process, here we would like to give a general step that required to create a managed or an unmanaged image from a generalized VHD.
Capture the VM image (for a managed database)
Generalize the VM image (for an unmanaged database)
Azure marketplace virtual machine image publishing
- Sign in to the Cloud Partner Portal and create a VM offer
- Offer Settings – Define the offer within Azure Marketplace
- SKU’s – Solutions can be differentiated by SKU based on their features sets, the VM image type, throughput/scalability, billing model, or other specific features
- Publish a VM offer
For in-depth Azure marketplace documentation please refer to the article here.
Real Problem
Once after uploading the VM image into the Marketplace, before getting into public, the images will be available in preview items (inclusively for testing) for the configured subscriptions.
During the testing, we have tried installing BizTalk360 to verify the BizTalk360 is installing automatically without any issues. Without any problem, the BizTalk360 installed its services and created a database. But it failed to create the website. In the installation log, we have found error lines (some may face different error code) to the following:
WriteIIS7ConfigChanges: Error 0x80070002: Site not found for create application.
WriteIIS7ConfigChanges: Error 0x80070002: Failed to configure IIS application.
WriteIIS7ConfigChanges: Error 0x80070002: WriteIIS7ConfigChanges Failed.
WriteIIS7ConfigChanges Failed
We are able to understand that the problem is not due to the creation of the Website but during the changes in it. To drill down the problem, we tried to create a web pool manually and changed its identity. During the change, we faced an exception below.
You may face this specific issue when you are running IIS 7+ and versions. When we try to change the application pool identity of an application pool to a domain account, we get the above error while committing the changes.
The error code might change according to your machine operating system and IIS version, but you will get the text as keyset does not exist while trying to update the application pool identity with a custom account or while trying to specify a connect as a user. You might also get the below error codes:
0x80090005
0x8009000D
Cause of the problem
Possibility 1
This issue happens when your IIS specific machine keys are corrupted or missing. Your machine keys might go corrupt if there was an improper shutdown of the machine or the machine was cloned from an existing image or if there was a system crash.
We have referred some blogs and articles for this issue, and they suggested to replace the machine keys. What if you don’t have a backup (Its always a good idea to have a backup of the machine keys)? Unfortunately, we have no idea about the corrupted machine keys.
Okay! Let’s see the different machine keys required in IIS for encryption.
The location of the key depends on the operating system (from Windows server 2012 onward) is basically C:ProgramDataMicrosoftCryptoRSAMachineKeys
Possibility 2
The BizTalk360 service should be the LOCAL SERVICE account of the IIS Web Management Service (also known as WMSvc). This problem occurs because the SERVICE account does not have Read access on the iisWasKey key.
Possibility 3
Check if the metabase.xml is corrupted or if c2319c42033a5ca7f44e731bfd3fa2b5_GUID is corrupted. In IIS any sensitive data like passwords won’t be stored in plain text and will have to be encrypted before it is stored in the config file and get decrypted accordingly when needed.
Most suggest to rebuild or reinstall IIS 
. But what if reinstalling IIS is not an option?
How we solved the case
We can regenerate these machine keys without reinstalling IIS completely. To do that follow the below steps.
1. Rename the below files or move them to a different location from C:ProgramDataMicrosoftCryptoRSAMachineKeys. This time I don’t want to take the risk, so I just took existing machine keys as a backup.
|
6de9cb26d2b98c01ec4e9e8b34824aa2_GUID
|
iisConfigurationKey
|
|
d6d986f09a1ee04e24c949879fdb506c_GUID
|
NetFrameworkConfigurationKey
|
|
76944fb33636aeddb9590521c2e8815a_GUID
|
iisWasKey
|
2. Backup applicationhost.config, then delete everything inside the tags below in applicationhost.config. Delete the contents within <configProtectedData> or <providers>.
<configProtectedData>
<providers>
…
</providers>
</configProtectedData>
3. Open a command prompt in admin mode and run the below command
“%windir%system32inetsrviissetup.exe /install SharedLibraries”
Now you will receive a message “the error Failed = 0x80070005”. Even though it shows a failure message, the above steps should regenerate the machine keys and the configprotecteddata section in applicationhost.config.
If the above suggestions don’t help, the most preferable option would be to reinstall IIS to fix the corruption (no other go).
Fix in the Marketplace
From my understanding, the machine keys might be corrupted due to an improper shutdown of the machine. Because we used the Sysprep command to generalize the VM.
sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown /mode:vm
The above command helped the image to remove computer-specific information such as installed drivers and the computer security identifier (SID).
Once after running the sysprep.exe command, we faced the WriteIIS7ConfigChanges exception. So, to fix the issue, we used the below registry command to regenerate the machine keys during the machine provision/first-time launch.
in RegenerateIISKeys.reg file
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRunOnce]
“BizTalk360 Azure Marketplace Installer”=””C:AzureMarketplaceInstallerRegenerateIISKeys.bat””
In RegenerateIISKeys.bat file
START cmd.exe /k “C:WindowsSystem32inetsrviissetup.exe”
After the bootup, at the initial launch (only one time) RegenerateIISKeys.bat file will be called by the RegenerateIISKeys.reg file to regenerate the machine keys. So, during the installation of BizTalk360, the installer will have the new machine keys and the installation will be successful.
Conclusion
Keeping the user perspective in mind, we have built various deployment choices for BizTalk360 customers which would ease the installation and provide a user-friendly experience. You are just one click away from provisioning a brand new BizTalk360 VM in Microsoft Azure.
I want to take this opportunity once again to thank everyone in and out of Kovai.co for this wonderful opportunity and believing in us. We are looking forward, for many more opportunities.
The post BizTalk360 Azure Marketplace Installer for BizTalk 2016 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Saranya Ramakrishnan | Dec 27, 2019 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
It’s time to upgrade your BizTalk360 installation! We are here with our next release of BizTalk360 V.9.0.3.
A brief summary of new features we introduced in V9.0.3
Database Size Monitoring
Database Size monitoring helps to monitor the Data and log file size of the BizTalk and BizTalk360 databases, by simply configuring the error and warning threshold values for the database and log file sizes.
Below are the BizTalk databases that can be monitor using BizTalk360:
- BizTalkDTADb
- BizTalkMgmtDb
- BizTalkMsgBoxDb
- BizTalkRuleEngineDb
- BAM databases (BAMPrimaryImport, BAMAlertsApplication, BAMArchive, BAMStarSchema)
- SSODB
Analytics Custom Widget Reporting
By using the BizTalk360 Reporting Custom widget, you can retrieve performance metrics of the BizTalk environment such as Messaging Performance, Message Transmission failure rate, Server performance, etc., as a report. Based on the configured schedule you can receive that report in your email box.
Configurable Polling interval for monitoring
By default, the BizTalk360 monitoring service checks the status of all configured artifacts every 1 min. However, BizTalk360 provides an option for the user to configure the polling interval. Based on the configured polling interval, the monitoring service will determine the monitor status of the endpoints.
Migration Scenario – After migration, the default polling interval 1 min will be set to all the Endpoints. This can be modified as per your requirements.
SQL Server Cluster Monitoring
we extend our support to monitor the SQL Server cluster. Cluster SQL Server can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server Network name. BizTalk360 will start monitoring the currently active node. In case of a failover, BizTalk360 will automatically take the active server for monitoring.
The following resources can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server:
- CPU & Memory
- NT Services
- Disks (available disk space)
- Event Logs
Subscriptions (Message Box)
In addition, to retrieve the service instance and message details, BizTalk360 allows users to execute queries to retrieve the details of the subscription from the message box database. The subscription details such as Name, Service Name, state, subscription type, service instance id will be retrieved on message box query execution.
Look at this blog article to see the benefits of the above features in detail.
Let’s jump into the feature improvements in detail
SQL Authentication Support
BizTalk360 allows users to view and monitor the SQL Query results by using Secure SQL Query and database query monitoring functionality. In Which BizTalk360 executes the Query by connecting to the server against windows system users (using windows authentication mode).
But shared server can have multiple users having access to different instances and Databases. So, to support this, we have improved these functionalities by supporting SQL Authentication mode, With this user can connect to the database with the relevant user credentials. From this version on, you can also query your Azure databases.
Dashboard Improvements
The dashboard is one of the key functionalities where customers would be using more often on a day-day basis. So, we have considered improving the dashboard frequently based on customer feedback.
BizTalk360 Monitoring Dashboard improvements
- Indication of alarm status (Enabled/Disabled)
- Number of Alerts Notified (2/3)
- The artifacts from the collapsed view are now clickable to route to the respective mapping section
BizTalk Group Dashboard improvements
BizTalk group dashboard in BizTalk360 gives the consolidated view of all the artifacts mapped to all the alarms in an environment.
From this version on, we allow the user to configure the BizTalk group dashboard based on their needs. Users can choose the artifacts types (Application, Servers, Queues, Folder Monitoring, etc . ) that they want to look into the dashboard. So that BizTalk360 monitoring service will fetch the status of only the chosen artifacts type on every cycle, rather looking for all the artifacts. In this way, we have improved the performance of the monitoring service. Also, you can Enable or Disable the BizTalk Group dashboard at any point in time.
Migration Scenario – After migration, the BizTalk Group Dashboard will be in enable mode, with all the artifacts type chosen. After which you can reconfigure this as per your requirement.
Tracking (DTA) Performance Data Collection Optimisation
In the earlier version, Users can enable tracking data collection for various metrics type, say Failure/Success rate for Port, Schema, Messaging Performance for the port , schema, orchestration, etc, where BizTalk360 will start collecting data for all the metrics of the selected type. From this version on, to improve the performance, we allow users to choose the relevant DTA metrics, which will reduce the number of calls to the DTA database.
Users can choose the DTA metrics at the environment level in a well-ordered tree view diagram.
Migration Scenario –If you enabled Tracking (DTA) Performance Data Collection then after migration all DTA metrics under the selected type will be enabled. This can be modified as per your requirements.
Logic App
With the rise of Hybrid integration solutions, the job of BizTalk administrators has extended to the (Azure) cloud. BizTalk360 helps these administrators by providing operational and monitoring support for Logic Apps and API Apps, thereby admin need not check the Azure portal to know the health of these services, where they can easily operate and monitor from BizTalk360.
However, in the earlier version of BizTalk360, we allow all the users to manage all the LogicApps there is no access restriction. We have improved this in this release where admin can define which user can manage (enable, disable, delete, trigger) the Logic Apps based on the role.
In addition to this, we have introduced the filter option to filter the logic apps under different subscriptions.
Quick Alarm
With the quick alarm, you can select the application artifacts that you want to monitor, BizTalk360 will automatically map that artifacts for monitoring.
Notification Channel
Now you can define the error type i.e. only error & warning or error/warning/healthy of the artifacts to get notified in the notification channels(slack, Service Now, Webhook).
Place Holder Encryption
Place holders can be used in the custom widgets. To tighten the security now all the placeholder values configured in custom widgets will get encrypted. For the existing placeholder, values will get encrypted automatically once you upgraded to the latest version.
Service Instance operations
From this version on, we allow the user to enter the reason in the comment section (optional) for all the service instance operations (Resume/Suspend/Terminate). The same will get audited for reference.
SFTP
All the file mask patterns supported in BizTalk server will now support in BizTalk360
Conclusion
Considering the feedback from our customers, BizTalk360 will continue to provide more useful features.
Why not give BizTalk360 a try! It takes only 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your own BizTalk Environments.
The post BizTalk360 V9.0.3 New Features and Enhancements Summary appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Lattetapriyanka Vishu | Dec 23, 2019 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In this blog, we will take a detail look about the feature Secure SQL Queries which is available in BizTalk360 and we shall look how effectively it can be used in by the BizTalkies and what are all the things we can achieve by having this feature and how we made this feature so reliable for you.
Secure SQL Queries
Secure SQL Queries is a secure platform to store predefined queries and provide access to BizTalk members to execute the queries. BizTalk360, by default, comes pre-loaded with a set of queries and allows the users (with permissions) to build secure SQL queries that are more appropriate to the organization’s business.
Reliability of Secure SQL Queries
BizTalk Support members will typically have a bunch of standard SQL queries they run on a regular basis to get some reporting on BizTalk databases. Each individual team member will have their own set of SQL queries and they manage it on their local machines. Which will basically result in two things, useful reporting queries are not shared between team members and maintaining the queries in SQL files and accessing different files for the different environment is not productive.
BizTalk360 allows you to save the SQL queries so that the queries can be saved under a centralized area and available for access to all the BizTalk members.
SQL queries are used for fetching the report from the BizTalk Database where admins are concerned to provide full access as it may have confidential information and interested to give privilege only for the authenticated BizTalk members. This can be handled by using the User Access Policy feature in BizTalk360 which allows to create a user and provide the permission for the saved Secure SQL Queries (only the enabled query will be listed for the users). Permission can be provided for the Secure SQL Queries as follows Add Query, Edit & Execute Query, Edit and Save query, Delete Query and Export Query.
At any point in time, there may be a chance of data loss or change may happen in the queries. To handle this sort of situation BizTalk360 provides you the feature Governance & Audit for Secure SQL Queries. If any operation like Create, Edit, Delete is performed against the Secure SQL Queries will be captured in the BizTalk360’s Governance & Audit section. So that we can find the details of the operation performed through the feature Governance & Audit for Secure SQL Queries.
Functionalities of Secure SQL Queries
In BizTalk360, you can query against the table’s data. Based on the customer’s requirement it allows you to store and execute the stored procedures.
In real-time when more users are involved, or remote connections are being established with the SQL Server, SQL authentication can be used. In shared servers where different users should have access to different databases and when a client connects to an instance of SQL Server on another computer than the one on which the client is running, in that case, SQL Server authentication is needed. Such user can select the Authentication Mode as SQL Authentication so that the user name and password can be provided, and the query can be saved and executed
Using the SQL Authentication Mode, you can get connected to the Azure Database by providing the Azure Database’s instance name, username, password for saving the queries.
Let’s glimpse on Secure SQL Queries in BizTalk360
Secure SQL Queries is implemented in the Operation, Monitoring, and Analytics section. Since most of our customers use this feature widely.
Secure SQL Queries in Operation
BizTalk360 comes with a pre-loaded set of queries. The users can choose one of these pre-loaded queries from the drop-down list. When the item is selected from the drop-down, the query automatically executes, and the result is displayed in the Query Results pane. It allows users to define and add/edit/delete your own queries. In which you can execute the query to check for the results.
Secure SQL Queries in Monitoring
You can monitor the Database Query results by configuring the query which returns the scalar value. If there is any deviation in the query results, then BizTalk360 will trigger an alert notification.
Secure SQL Queries in Analytics
The BizTalk360 Reporting feature includes a widget called Secure SQL Queries, where you can map the existing Secure SQL Queries to such custom widgets. The custom SQL widgets hold the top 100 records of the mapped query and send that as a report on the scheduled time. This feature can be powerful as it enables you to automatically receive reports based on SQL queries, without the need to requesting it manually over and over again!
Performance impact
BizTalk databases can grow extremely bigger. It’s not uncommon to have over 1 million records in certain tables (ex: MessageInOut table in Tracking Database). Executing some queries like just a plain “SELECT * ..” on those tables without any query optimization or locks can have serious performance impact during business hours. Always try to write the query which returns the selective results.
Secure SQL Queries are designed to allow the users to execute only the ‘Select’ statement for queries and Execute command for Stored procedures. This will ensure the reliability of the data in the BizTalk Server and other databases.
Say, for instance, there may be a chance that the normal/a superuser runs a DELETE/TRUNCATE/DROP/UPDATE/INSERT commands through the secure SQL queries in BizTalk360. The above-mentioned commands are restricted by design to avoid data loss and secure the data.
Benefits of having Secure SQL Queries
- Single management tool for users to execute the queries
- No need for SQL Server Management Studio
- Central Query Repository – maintaining queries is much easier
- The end-users need not have direct access to the SQL database
- The queries will be executed in the context of the service account, therefore only the service account requires access
- Queries can be executed against any SQL instance/database
Conclusion
We are constantly improving on the features based on feedback in the customer forum. BizTalk360 will continue to provide more useful features in every release. Why not give BizTalk360 a try!
The post Effective Usage of Secure SQL Queries Feature in BizTalk360 appeared first on BizTalk360.
by Mekala Ramesh | Dec 16, 2019 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Configuring polling interval is the most requested feature from our customers, therefore we have introduced the same in our latest version. This feature will ease the monitoring capability of web endpoints, Azure services from BizTalk360. Consider, there is a situation where your application in BizTalk Server relays on external endpoints and it is crucial to make sure the status of the web endpoints all the time. With the monitoring capability in BizTalk360, you can monitor HTTP, SOAP, REST-based web services easily and get to know when your endpoint URL is not active. Likely, we can think of many scenarios where there are monitoring requirements for your BizTalk server.
Existing System
BizTalk360 Monitoring service is the main component where it looks through your BizTalk environment to ensure a safe day to day business transactions. The frequency of the monitoring service poll is controlled by setting the polling interval. Until the previous version, the polling interval value is not changeable by the users since it is defined in the internal code level. By default, the frequency is 60 secs.
Some customers don’t want monitoring service poll every minute for a few components during monitoring. For Example, consider external web endpoint is enabled for monitoring, therefore monitoring service will hit the external web services/server every minute to check the status. This frequent hit may slow down the performance in the servers where the endpoints are hosted.
To avoid the frequent hit on the server, new functionality has been implemented in BizTalk360 as “Manage Polling Interval”.
What is the New Change?
We have introduced a new section “Manage Polling interval” (Settings -> Monitoring Notification -> Manage Polling interval) where it holds default polling interval (60 secs) for the components, Logic Apps, API Apps, Web Endpoints, File, FTP, SFTP, MSMQ, Azure Service Bus Queue, IBM Queue. Users are privileged to configure the polling intervals based on their business needs as per the below screenshot.
Let us consider an example scenario where as a user, you want to monitor the web endpoint which your BizTalk applications consume from the external web services and you want the endpoint to be always up and running without any downtime.
This business need will be easily achievable through BizTalk360 just by creating and mapping the endpoints to the alarm.
From this very moment, the BizTalk360 monitoring service will take care of the monitoring every minute. At any point in time, if you don’t want the monitoring for every minute, you can change the polling interval for the web endpoint. If the setting is changed to 5 minutes, then the monitoring service will look at the endpoint status every 5 minutes and trigger the email alerts.
Endpoint Level Polling Interval Configuration
This is another interesting capability BizTalk360 provides, where users can set the polling interval per web endpoint level by overriding the global configuration. This feature will facilitate the customer to configure different polling intervals for different endpoints configured for their BizTalk Applications.
As an example, consider there are two endpoints configured for Monitoring in BizTalk360 and you want to check the status of both the endpoints in different polling intervals. Say 1 in every 15 mins, other in every 30 mins.
As mentioned in the previous section, polling interval can be configured in the settings level but to achieve this scenario there is a specific option “Endpoint Monitoring interval” provided in the web point configuration screen for every endpoint as mentioned in the below screenshot. Monitoring service will give priority to this value for web endpoints rather than the global configuration settings.
Conclusion
With this new capability, users can configure their own polling interval for the components which will ease the monitoring capability of their BizTalk Environment. Why not give BizTalk360 a try! It takes about 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your BizTalk environments.
The post Configuring Polling Interval appeared first on BizTalk360.
