Edit

Share via

How to Create a BizTalk Server Hosting Environment

  • Article

Before you create your BizTalk Server hosting environment, consider the following recommendations:

  • Use different hosts for trusted and non-trusted orchestrations and receive handlers

    Any items running in a host (for example, orchestrations, pipelines, receive and send handlers) run under the same identity, and have access to the work and suspended queues for that host.

    If a message cannot be delivered to an orchestration due to permission errors, the message is placed in the suspended queue of the host where the sending process (a receive pipeline or another orchestration) is running. However, if the orchestration and the sending process (for example, a receive pipeline) are running in the same host, the orchestration can still access the message in the suspended queue. This could potentially compromise your system if a non-trusted orchestration is running in a trusted host.

    We recommend that you run non-trusted orchestrations in a separate host, with a different service account than the trusted hosts in your BizTalk group. For information about designating a host as trusted, see How to Modify Host Properties.

  • Limit the database and log size in the BizTalk Server databases

    The BizTalk MessageBox databases and the BizTalk Tracking database grow much faster than the other BizTalk Server databases. As part of your backup and maintenance program, you should update these databases frequently.

    By default, the tables in the BizTalk Server databases do not have a log size limit. As part of your backup and maintenance program, we recommend that you limit the log size to prevent the logs from becoming too large and potentially using all the disk space. For information about managing the size of tracking database, see Archiving and Purging the BizTalk Tracking Database.

  • Use SQL Server clustering

    To provide high availability of the BizTalk Server databases, we recommend that you cluster the SQL servers where the BizTalk Server databases are stored. This will help minimize downtime if one of the databases or SQL Server fails. For more information about SQL Server clustering, see "Failover Clustering Architecture" in SQL Server Books Online.

Prerequisites

The following are prerequisites for performing the procedure in this topic:

  • You must be logged on as a member of the BizTalk Server Administrators group.

  • The instructions in the following procedure assume that you have installed BizTalk Server with the complete installation option. If you did not install BizTalk Server with the complete installation option, some of the administration objects listed in step 1 may not be on your system.

Create a BizTalk Server hosting environment

  1. Use BizTalk Server Configuration to create a new BizTalk group. For information about creating a new BizTalk Server group, see Configuring Groups Using the BizTalk Server Configuration.

    BizTalk Server Configuration creates the following administration objects:

    Administration object Description
    BizTalk Management database (BizTalkMgmtDb) This database is the central meta-information store for all BizTalk Servers.
    BizTalk MessageBox database (BizTalkMsgBoxDb) This database stores subscriptions predicates. It is a host platform, and keeps the queues and state tables for each BizTalk Server host. The MessageBox database also stores the messages and message properties. For information about MessageBox databases, including adding additional MessageBox databases, see Managing MessageBox Databases.
    Server This is the computer on which BizTalk Server is installed and configured, and where host instances are running. You create host instances from a host created on a server. For more information about creating a host, see How to Create a New Host. For information about creating host instances, see How to Add a Host Instance.
    BAM Primary Import database (BAMPrimaryImport) This is the database where the Business Activity Monitoring tool collects tracking data.
    Rule Engine database (BizTalkRuleEngineDb) This database is a repository for policies, rules, and vocabularies for data references in business rules.
    BizTalk Tracking database (BizTalkDTADb) This database stores business and health-monitoring data tracked by the BizTalk Server tracking engine.
    SSO database (SSODB) This database stores credential information.
    In-process host with corresponding host instances The in-process host operates within the BizTalk Server process space.
    Isolated host with corresponding host instances The isolated host operates outside of the BizTalk Server installation.
    HTTP/S, BizTalk Message Queuing, File, SMTP, SOAP, and SQL The Configuration Wizard creates the adapters that are part of BizTalk Server.

  2. Use the BizTalk Server Administration console or WMI to add components to your BizTalk Server environment as needed. To scale out your solution, add MessageBox databases, hosts, and servers.

  3. Use the BizTalk Administration Console or WMI to create host instances on the mapped servers. This step determines on which servers BizTalk Server will run. As the needs in your enterprise change, you can add servers, remove servers, and change server-to-host mapping.

See Also

Managing BizTalk Hosts and Host Instances
Hosts
Host Instances