Two major ways to provide high availability for BizTalk Server 2006 are:
1. Running multiple host instances.
2. Clustering the BizTalk Server databases.
This article contains steps required to create and manager multiple host instances. BizTalk Server allows you to have multiple Receive and Send host instances simultaneously. You may design your solution as per your requirement.
Creating new Host:
- Open the BizTalk Server Administration Console.
- Expand the tree nodes up to “BizTalk Group” è Platform Settings è Hosts
- Right click on “Hosts” and select NewèHost. This will open the Host Properties page as shown below.
- Fill the Name field.
- Leave the type as “In-Process”
- Default value for Windows group is “BizTalk Application Users”. You may change depending on your BizTalk set up.
- You may want to enable the “Host tracking” by selecting “Allow Host Tracking” but you must leave it as unchecked if you don’t require it. Enabling tracking comes with its own performance hit.
- You may also go to “Advanced” tab to do the configuration. You must refer to MSDN before changing any settings here.Click OK to create the host
Creating new Host Instance:
- Right click on the “Host Instances” node and select NewèHost Instance
- Select the “Host Name” and “Server” from the drop down list.
- Provide the user credentials for this host instance by clicking on the “Configure” button.
o BizTalk Server will use this user credentials for running the new service.
o This account must have SQL Server permissions. The recommended way to rat permissions is to add this account to the BizTalk Server Host Windows group.
- Click “OK” to create a new host instance.
Once you have created the Host and its instance, you are now ready to use it as per your requirement.
Creating Receive/Send Handlers
- Expand the tree nodes of BizTalk Administration console up to “BizTalk Group” è Platform Settings è Adapters
- Right click on your adapter and select NewèReceive/Send Handler
- Select proper Host Name in the XXX – Adapter Handler Properties page.
- This configuration change requires host instance restart so, restart the associated host instances for the changes to take effect.
- Select the Receive/Send handler in the Receive/Send port from the BizTalk Administration Console
- You will not get an option of selecting “Send Hander” from Visual Studio. By default it assigns to the default Host.
