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Restore BizTalk Services

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In my previous post we covered backup of BizTalk Services. In this post we will cover the other part of the story, i.e. restore of BizTalk Services. To re-iterate, backup-restore feature provides solution for following scenarios:

  • Disaster Recovery
  • Service migration from dev to prod
  • Upgrade service edition (basic to standard, basic topremium and standard to premium)

 Note: Backup-restore feature is not provided to Developer edition.

Pre-requisites and Setup

You need to install Windows Azure PowerShell on your machine and download Windows Azure BizTalk Service Management PowerShell Cmdlets. Details about both of these is available here. This link contains a sample for management of BizTalk Services through PowerShell. Follow the description of this sample to setup your machine. Summarizing the steps needed to be performed:

  1. Install Windows Azure PowerShell
  2. Compile the sample application to generate Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.BizTalkService.dll
  3. Import Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.BizTalkService.dll
  4. Set Azure Subscription

 Perform Restore

 Set Azure Subscription

 If you followed the steps mentioned in the sample's description you should have Windows Azure PowerShell command window open with subscription set to the one where your BizTalk Service is provisioned. Execute following commands to set Azure subscription:

 C:PS> $subID = <Subscription ID> C:PS> $thumbprint = <Certificate Thumbprint> C:PS> $myCert = Get-Item cert:\LocalMachineMy$thumbprint C:PS> Set-AzureSubscription  –SubscriptionName "MySub"  -SubscriptionId $subID  -Certificate $myCert

 Note: Install the management certificate for your subscription in machine's certificate store under Local Machine.  

Execute Restore Cmdlet

Execute the Restore-AzureBizTalkService cmdlet to restore a BizTalk Service deployment from a backup. This cmdlet takes following inputs:

  1. ResourceName – Name of your biztalk service
  2. Location – Region where you want to restore the service
  3. BackupName – Container inside storage account where backup is stored
  4. BackupStoreConectionString – Storage account connection string where backup is stored
  5. Configuration – Configuration file which contains additional input parameters for service restoration. The sample contains couple of configuration files that you can modify. I picked up the sample_create_mandatory.xml file as it only contains the mandatory parameters required to be provided. Another section below covers this configuration file in detail.
 C:PS> Restore-AzureBizTalkService
 -ResourceName <Biztalk Service name>
 -Location "<Region>"
 -BackupName <Backup container name>
 -BackupStoreConnectionString
 "BlobEndpoint=https://<account name>.blob.core.windows.net/;
 QueueEndpoint=https://<account name>.queue.core.windows.net/;
 TableEndpoint=https://<account name>.table.core.windows.net/;
 AccountName=<account name>;
 AccountKey=<account key>;
 DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https"
 -ConfigurationFile "Configuration xml file path"

Or...

 C:PS> Restore-AzureBizTalkService
 -ResourceName <Biztalk Service name>
 -Location "<Region>"
 -BackupName <Backup container name>
 -BackupStoreConnectionString
 "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;
 AccountName=<your storage account name>;
 AccountKey=<your storage account key>"
 -ConfigurationFile "Configuration xml file path"

 Note: This may take up around 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete.

Request submission

Request completion

On Azure Portal

Configuration File

 Configuration file contains the input parameters required by various management operations like New, Restore, Update etc. Here is a sample configuration file with mandatory parameters:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <ServiceSettings xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
 <ServiceVersion>1.1.0</ServiceVersion>
 <Edition>developer</Edition>
 <UnitCount>1</UnitCount>
 <TrackingStoreConnectionString>Data Source=tcp:{server name}.database.windows.net;Initial Catalog={database name};Integrated Security=False;User ID={user name}@{server name};Password={password};Asynchronous Processing=True;Encrypt=True;TrustServerCertificate=False</TrackingStoreConnectionString>
 <MonitoringStoreConnectionString>BlobEndpoint=https://{storage account name}.blob.core.windows.net/;QueueEndpoint=https://{storage account name}.queue.core.windows.net/;TableEndpoint=https://{storage account name}.table.core.windows.net/;AccountName={storage account name};AccountKey={storage account key};DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https</MonitoringStoreConnectionString>
 </ServiceSettings>

You need to provide appropriate values for following parameters in the configuration:

  1. Edition: Possible values for edition are

    1. developer
    2. standard
    3. premium
    4. basic

  2. Tracking store connection string

  3. Monitoring/Archiving store connection string

 

Execute Resume Cmdlet

BizTalk Service gets restored in a suspended state where the service accept only management operations but runtime messages are not processed. Suspended state lets you to change any configuration of the service before message processing can start.

Execute the Resume-AzureBizTalkService cmdlet to resume the BizTalk Service. This cmdlet takes following inputs:

  1. ResourceName – Name of your biztalk service
 C:PS> Resume-AzureBizTalkService -ResourceName <Biztalk Service name>

 

Note: This may take up around 15 minutes to complete.

Request submission

 

Request completion

 

 

On Azure Portal

 

 

Related Links

  1. Backup BizTalk Service REST API
  2. Windows Azure BizTalk Services Management Sample
  3. Backup BizTalk Services on my blog
  4. Restore BizTalk Services on my Blogger website
  5. BizTalk Services: Backup and Restore
  6. Business Continuity in BizTalk Services