Click here to access my new Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/ahmedfarrag

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Moved to a New Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/ahmedfarrag

see you there :)

Ahmed Farrag

Friday, May 09, 2008

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

Monday, March 03, 2008

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

Monday, January 21, 2008

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