Moved to a New Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/ahmedfarrag

see you there :)

Ahmed Farrag

Best Practices Analyzer v1.1 Shipped

last month, we shipped the Best Practices Analysers ..

here are some more details about it if you didn't know it before !!

Overview
The BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool.


What’s new:
V1.0 has 77 rules, v1.1 has 220 with 143 new rules added!

Here are some relevant rules
1. Added a warning rule for stopped orchestrations
2. a check on MaxLogSize MSDTC
3. Verify that TempDB and BizTalkMsgBoxDb data and log files are placed on separate drives
4. Check that the Max Degree of Parallelism setting is set to 0 in all other BizTalk databases
5. Verify that the MaxWorkerThreads in the SQL Server UMS configuration setting is set to XXX
6. Check that the Maximum Server Memory is set to XXX GB
7. System Time Diff between SQL and BizTalk Machines
8. Orphaned SPIDs
9. SQL Server Service Pack Installed for DB : xxxxxx
10. Ignore Duplicate Key check
11. Check Biztalk SQL Server JObs running or not


Where to Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DDA047E3-408E-48BA-83F9-F397226CD6D4&displaylang=en


- Ahmed Farrag

Biztalk Operational Guide Released !!

i'm very excited about this new operational guide that was released a couple of weeks ago, it's really a must read for any Biztalk developer/administrator, it covers all the topics related to deployment, management and monitoring aspects of any Biztalk implemenation.

i have seen many customers who have deployed Biztalk but for some reason has missed on having a concrete strategy for the versioning/management and monitoring parts of the solution. the operational guide sheds the light over a lot of these issues that need to be tackled on any production environment.

you can find it here .

The guide can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5251f103-329d-4f8d-95b5-64f99f2f6dfc&DisplayLang=en.


Cheers
Ahmed

configuring MS DTC service on virtual images

i was trying to build a biztalk lab today and i was basically connecting a couple of virtual images on a virtual server and trying to assign a Biztalk Role for each image, i ran into the standard MSDTC settings that you have to manage with Biztalk, which entails a couple of standard steps,,, after doing everything , the MS DTC didn't work !!! .. it said that the machines have the same identifier and therefore the DTC won't work, it seems that both images were a clone from each other !!

i had to unistall and insall the MS DTC on the main server and it worked after that like a charm : )

P.S: you will have to reboot the machine after you uninstall the MSDTC service using the msdtc.exe -uninstall

Cheers :)

Ahmed

Best Practices for the Biztalk SQL Server Adapter

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/0/f/50f397a7-13c7-4807-bd51-66db5f5b0908/best%20practices%20for%20the%20sql%20adapter.doc

Now @ Microsoft

Dear all -

this week is my second week as a Microsoft Employee :)
my title in Microsoft in a really Long one ,, it goes like this

"
Regional Technology Solution Professional
Process Platform Solutions
Middle East and Africa (MEA HQ)
"
i guess it will be challenging to get this on the business card :)

i'm really excited about the new Role, i'll be basically working with the pre-Sales team in Microsoft on Biztalk opportunities in the region, conducing technical Architecture sessions and delivering proof of concept solutions.

cheers : )

Ahmed

Tips : Consuming Orchestrations as WebService

as i promised those who attended my training last Thursday, i'd post the issue that we faced together and the solution we found during consuming Orchestrations exposed as Webservices from infopath.

it started with the event viewer throwing an exception that the "NT Service Account" doesn't have privileges to access the Biztalk Database and we found another entry about the "Isolated Host" user doesn't have privileges to register the SOAP receive port.

well, the solution was simple, basically, when you expose an orchestration as a webservice, the wizard automatically creates the webservice with it's code for you. however, when you try to call this webservice, from a client like InfoPath, the AppPool under which this site runs normally uses the default NT System Service account, all what you need to do is to assign a different identity for that AppPool that has privilege to access the SQL Database.

also you need to do the same for the user running the Isolated Biztalk Host Instance.

That's it :)

Cheers :)