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Maintaining Reliability

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This section provides information about how you can resolve reliability issues with a BizTalk Server system. These issues may be discovered by the routine maintenance checks that are performed in the Routine Maintenance Checklists section of this document.

In addition to the topics in this section, other topics in this document address reliability issues. These topics are listed in Related Sections below.

Testing Group Failover

Perform the procedures in this section as part of the reliability checks that should be performed monthly. These procedures include testing the group failover policy, and testing whether the group resources can fail over.

Note

If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group should be able to perform this procedure.

Note

To perform the procedures in this section, you must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group on the local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority.

Perform the following steps to test group failover on computers running Windows Server 2008.

To test a group failover policy

  1. Make sure you have installed the Failover Clustering feature on at least two computer running Windows Server 2008 so as to create a two node Windows Failover Cluster. For instructions on how to install this feature, see Install the Failover Clustering Feature (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=157259).

  2. Open Failover Cluster Management by clicking Start, clicking Administrative Tools, and then clicking Failover Cluster Management.

  3. In the console tree, expand the cluster node, expand the Services and Applications node, right-click the clustered instance of the application to be failed over, and then click Properties.

  4. On the Failover tab, set Maximum failures in the specified period to 0, and then click OK.

  5. In the console tree, expand the Services and Applications node.

  6. In the details pane, right-click a resource, and then click Properties.

  7. On the Policies tab, set Maximum restarts in the specified period to 0, and then click OK.

  8. Right-click the resource, click More Actions, and then click Simulate Failure of this resource. Verify whether the group reacts based on the policy you specified in the previous step.

  9. Right-click the clustered instance of the application to be failed over, and then click Properties.

  10. On the Failover tab, set Maximum failures in the specified period to 1, and then click OK.

  11. Right-click the resource and select Bring this resource online.

To test whether group resources can fail over

  1. Make sure you have installed the Failover Clustering feature on the computer running Windows Server 2008. For instructions on how to install this feature, see Install the Failover Clustering Feature (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=157259).

  2. Open Failover Cluster Management by clicking Start, clicking Administrative Tools, and then clicking Failover Cluster Management.

  3. In the console tree, expand the cluster node, expand the Services and Applications node, and then click the clustered instance of the application to be failed over.

  4. On the Action menu, click Move this service or application to another node, and then click the node to which the application will be failed over.

  5. In the Please confirm action dialog box, choose to move the application to selected node.

  6. Make sure that the node to which you moved the application to is listed against the Current Owner in the details pane of the application.

Ensuring Multiple Servers Are Part of a BizTalk Group

To ensure the reliability of a system, at least two physical BizTalk servers should be part of the BizTalk group. If you need to add a server to a BizTalk group, keep the following in mind:

  • A server can only be associated with one BizTalk group. If a server already belongs to another group, you must first remove that server from its current group before you can add it to a new group. For more information about removing a server from a BizTalk group, see "How to Remove a Server from a Group" in BizTalk Server Help at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155577.

  • BizTalk groups associated with different servers in a BizTalk Server environment do not interact except to exchange messages.

  • The BizTalk Server runtime must be installed on the computer you want to add to the BizTalk group.

Note

To perform the procedures in this topic, you must be logged on as a member of the SSO Administrators group and as a member of the Windows Administrators group.

To determine whether at least two physical BizTalk servers are part of the BizTalk group

  1. Open the BizTalk Server Administration console by clicking Start, pointing to All Programs, pointing to Microsoft BizTalk Server, and then clicking BizTalk Server Administration.

  2. Expand the BizTalk Server node, expand the BizTalk Group node, and then expand the Platform Settings node.

  3. Click the Servers node. Verify that more than one server is listed in the Servers pane.

    Note

    To view information about the server, right-click the server, point to View, and then click Group Hub Page.

To add a server to a BizTalk group

  1. On the computer that you want to add to a BizTalk group, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft BizTalk Server, and then click BizTalk Server Configuration.

  2. In Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Configuration, select Custom configuration.

  3. In Database server name, type the name of the SQL server for the BizTalk group that the server is joining.

  4. In Service credential, type the appropriate user name and password that the services will use, and then click Configure.

  5. In the navigation tree on the left side of the screen, click Enterprise SSO.

  6. On the Enterprise Single Sign-On page, click Join an existing SSO system.

    Note

    Ensure that the server name and database name point to the master SSO database server for the BizTalk group that the server is joining.

  7. In the navigation tree on the left side of the screen, click Group.

  8. On the Group page, click Join an existing BizTalk Group.

    Note

    Ensure that the server name and database name point to the databases for the BizTalk group that the server is joining.

  9. On the menu bar, click Apply Configuration to configure both Enterprise Single Sign-On and the group on this computer.