Category: BizTalk

Administration, BizTalk, Databases, Maintenance

BizTalk database sizing statistics

thejohanhedberg

In the hope that this might help someone who is tasked to estimate the size of BizTalk Server 2006 databases, I’m offering a few statistics.


These statistics comes from an engagement that uses very few orchestrations and more or less does messaging only – ie do all the work in pipeline components and/or maps. Just to give you a hint of the volumes we are talking about – here are some numbers from the beginning of May:








































AvgRecvKB

AvgSndKB

Count

Month

Day


812 

7274 

476 

5

1


479

4111

1130

5

2


970

10877

444

5

3


680

10328

357

5

4


443

3288

1114

5

5


Now we have only been doing the volumes specified in the above table for roughly two months, before that is has been smaller but incrementally increasing (it would too drawn out to give the full story). I know that gives you a somewhat incomplete background, but that’s just how it is. Here are the sizes of the base BizTalk Server databases (all figures are in MB).


































Database

Data

Log

Total

Free


BAMPrimaryImport

655

380

1034

637


BizTalkMgmtDb

46

43

87

44


BizTalkMsgBoxDb

253

556

807

758


SSODB

13

13

25

15


I guess I should also mention that we have the BizTalk backup jobs doing full backups on a daily basis, as well as trasaction log backups every 20 minutes, and the DTA purge and archive setup for 12 live hours and 7 hard days. We have roughly about 300 receive ports, 1000 receive locations and 400 send ports and 20 or so orchestrations. Regular BizTalk Tracking hasn’t been globally turned off, but is at a basic minimum. A BAM Tracking component does the real tracking as far as monitoring goes.


Do you have any statistics that you could perhaps share with me?

BizTalk, Functoids, Performance

Caching database functoid and throttling

thejohanhedberg

In case you haven’t seen the Blogical.Shared.Functoids.ExecuteQuery, and the feature post at Mikael Håkanssons blog, it’s a cache enabled database lookup functoid – a revised version of a functoid that we have successfully used on previous projects, available for download on codeplex. Caching can greatly increase the performance of any solution. However BizTalk caching, as with all caching, has to be done wisely and with moderation. So be sure to test (and monitor) thoroughly for memory saturation so that you don’t hit throttling limits effectively bringing your BizTalk solution to a stand still. A good read that exemplifies the latter is this recent post by Yossi Dahan. Keep it in mind when using the functoid.

Administration, BizTalk, Configuration, Learning, Maintenance, Monitoring, Readings

BizTalk Administration Tutorials

thejohanhedberg

This post is for those of you who are administrators rather then developers, and don’t keep track of the latest downloads around BizTalk. Microsoft has, at the same time that they released a revised version of the developer centric tutorials, released BizTalk Server 2006 Adminstration Tutorials. The administration tutorials are planned to become two, although at the moment only one is available. The first part is setting up the environment, in this case a slightly altered version of what is available in the multi-server scenario of the installation guides adding on an ISA Server to be able to create the environment separate from your corporate network. The tutorials also describes how to setup this environment using Virtual Server 2005 R2 (although physical hardware is also mentioned) and goes much more in depth to make it a compelling learning experience, as opposed to the install guide that can sometimes be hard to follow for a first timer. The first tutorial weighs in at 138 pages (double the size of the install guide), not counting the supporting documents. The second part is supposed to feature common administrative exercises based on the environment setup in part 1. If your are to familiarize youself with BizTalk Server 2006 as an administrator, from what I’ve seen, I’d recommend these tutorials.

.NET 3.5, BizTalk, News, SOA

BizTalk Server 2006 R3

thejohanhedberg

Official news about the next release of BizTalk Server has been released on Steve Martins blog here with follow ups on the BizTalk Server Team Blog here and of course followed by other comments around the connected systems blogosphere. It’s been expected and anticipated. This is not an Oslo release, and it’s not a new product, and it’s not a service pack, but it’s an R3. I’m not quite sure what the difference is when compared to a service pack, but according to Steve 
“Because this release build on existing bits, the name of this release will be BizTalk Server 2006 R3. Refreshing the bits (instead of applying a large Service Pack) provides for the best update experience.“


What’s interesting around this release is not the fact that it will support the new wave of products and technologies being SQL 2008, Windows Server 2008, .NET 3,5 and Visual Studio 2008, although I’ve been told this in itself is not a small thing and I’m exhited about that as well, but the fact that they are choosing to bring in a couple of additional features. Among those are BizTalk RFID Mobile, an UDDI based Registry (no doubt inspired by the ESB Guidance) and additional LOB adapters and talk about service enabling and delivering SOA pattern and practices as part of the product. For me it’s a clear expression of the desire to make BizTalk a more attractive SOA plattform.


The official date for release is planned for Q1 2009, with a CTP expected later this year following the release of SQL Server 2008 in Q3 2008. There are however already TAP programs available for BizTalk Server as well as some of the other features by themselves. I wish I hade a customer ready to run with it today…

BizTalk, Download, Messaging, Pipeline Components

Pure Messaging Acknowledgements – Follow up

thejohanhedberg

This post is a follow up to my previous post Delivery Notifications outside Orchestrations – a pure Messaging approach. The sole reason for this is to provide a downloadable demo and a walkthrough of that. The demo features a solution with one pipeline component and one passthrough pipeline using the component. It also contains a bindings file to configure the ports needed. Like I said in my first post, there really isn’t much to it, but here it is…and this is how you get it running:






  2. Build Blogical.Shared.PipelineComponents.


  3. Copy Blogical.Shared.PipelineComponents.dll to <biztalk_install_dir>Pipeline Components and add it to the GAC.


  4. Build and Deploy Blogical.Shared.Pipelines. By default it deploys to the BizTalk Application AckRequired.


  5. Open the BizTalk Adminitration Console and import the AckRequired.Bindings.xml file in the solutions root folder. This will give you one receive port with one receive location

    and two send ports.


  6. Configure the FILE adapter settings on the ports.


  7. Drop a file for the AckRequired Receive Port.


  8. Notice the file that goes out through the send port and the ACK that goes out through the other send port.


  9. For more information read the original post and explore (what little there is) of the sample.