Well, after about 10 tries on a freshly built Windows XP SP2 laptop I was finally able to get the CTP build of BizTalk Server 2006 installed and configured. I had installed it before with no problems. For some reason, this new image of Windows just did not want to cooperate.
The problem I ran into was with the configuration of the user groups. I received this error:
Failed to check if BizTalk Application Users is a valid domain group.
This seemed odd, since this is a stand alone laptop. It is not a member of any domain. I was putting my user name for the Biztalk configuration as “biztalkuser”. I noticed in SQL 2005, the user name was listed as ComputerName\biztalkuser. I tired that and it worked. So, keep this in mind that you might have to use your computer name with your user name for configuring Biztalk 2006 even if you are not on a domain.
Don’t get me wrong, the overall installation process is orders of magnitude better in BizTalk 2006 then is was in 2004.
Also, the CTP release of the Oracle Data Base Adapter, Oracle Apps Adapter, PeopleSoft Adapter, and Siebel Adapter are included with the download. They are NOT installed automatically. You need to run the Microsoft BizTalk Adapters.MSI located in the LOBAdapters folder. Then, you need to register each adapter inside Biztalk Admin.
Oh, one more thing. If you download the installation guide for the CTP build, the default path is \Program Files\BizTalk Server 2006. This is not the same location as the server program files.
Best of luck.
Update: Well, after getting some great feedback from Microsoft directly on my installation problem it looks as though the problem was a full event log? Yep, that’s what the logs said.
So, if you have this type of issue with the CTP build try clearing your event log and trying again.
On a side note, it is STRONGLY recommended NOT to prefix your user name with the computer name for a single computer installation.