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BizTalk Group in the Enterprise Edition

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The Enterprise edition is the only edition that allows you to add >1 BizTalk computer to your "Group". If you need to "scale" for reliability and high availability, get the Enterprise edition.

So, what does this mean?

On BizTalk Server 1, there is a host with a host instance getting messages for processing. On BizTalk Server 2, you can create another host instance of the exact same host to get messages for processing. Now, there are two host instances getting the messages from the same location. If one of the host instance stops, you have failover with the other host instance. This functionality is built-in the Enterprise edition with no additional software or hardware requirements, including clustering. This functionality is not available with any other BizTalk edition. The BizTalk Evaluation edition is a time-bombed Enterprise edition.

If you require reliability or availability, then multiple BizTalk computers in the Group with Enterprise edition is the best choice. The Standard edition uses only one BizTalk computer in the computer. On the Standard edition, a host has one host instance on one BizTalk computer.

The following table lists some of the differences between the Enterprise and Standard editions: 

Functionality

Enterprise

 Standard

Group

>1 BizTalk computer

1 BizTalk computer

MsgBox databases

>1 MsgBox databases

1 MsgBox database

Applications

Unlimited

Limit of 5

Includes the BizTalk Adapter Pack (BAP), Accelerators and Host Integration Server (HIS).

Included

Included

All the BizTalk computers in the Group use the same BizTalk databases hosted on SQL Server. The differences between the SQL Server Enterprise and Standard editions are completely separate from the BizTalk editions. The BizTalk and SQL Server editions can be mixed. For example, you can have a BizTalk Standard edition computer using the SQL Server Enterprise edition. You can have a BizTalk Enterprise edition computer using the SQL Server Standard edition.

 

Related Links:

Pricing and Licensing FAQ
https://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/pricing-licensing-faq.aspx

Pricing and Licensing
https://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/pricing-licensing.aspx

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 30, 2013
    Hi Mandi, Thanks for the information ,so as you mentioned above do we need to buy two BizTalk license of enterprise edition for fail over scenario if we configure them with one one group? Thanks Amit Rajvanshi

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2013
    A "Group" simply means that the BizTalk servers share the same hosts, databases, and so on. Typically, "fail over" refers to a Cluster scenario with SQL Server. I'm assuming you mean the same host can run on multiple BizTalk servers. So the answer is Yes. If you want each server to join this "group", then each server needs the Enterprise edition. The "Group" concept in the Standard edition is misleading because you can only have one BizTalk server.

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2014
    a bit off, but I'm assuming that proper deployment of an Enterprise BizTalk configuraiton requires an Enterprise edition of MS SQL:  correct?

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2014
    I think if you ask several BizTalk people this question, the majority answer would be "It depends". For a highly available (HA) solution, you NEED the SQL Server instance to be clustered. Both the SQL Standard and Enterprise editions give you failover cluster capabilities. I believe SQL Standard has a 2-node failover cluster limit. If you are going to separate the BizTalk MsgBox databases on different SQL Servers (as opposed to SQL instances), then you may need SQL Enterprise because of the 2-node Failover Cluster limit with SQL Standard. SQL Enterprise offers more compute and memory. If BizTalk is going to hit SQL pretty hard, then you may need the increased compute capabilities with SQL Enterprise. In my opinion, if the SQL Servers are dedicated to BizTalk-use only, then SQL Standard is probably fine. In the end, it all depends on the environment. The SQL Feature List may be helpful: SQL 2008 R2 Feature List msdn.microsoft.com/.../cc645993(v=sql.105).aspx

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2017
    Thank you very much. Your article helped.