BizTalk SOA Evangelist

After the successful event of Global Windows Azure Bootcamp! we are excited to present another Azure Bootcamp focused specifically for IaaS (Infrastructure as Service) on June1, 2013.

This one day deep dive class will get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes a trainer with deep real world experience with Windows Azure IaaS features, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned.

Here is the link for registration:

http://nashvilleazureiaas.eventbrite.com/

--Cheers

GWAC at Nashville, TN (USA) has proved a great success !!! Despite of the rain we saw great turn out of Azure enthusiasts at the venue. Total count of attendees was 25. We had 7 hours of non stop training and labs. People loved the training content and Hands on Lab. You can gaze the scale of enthusiasm with the fact that each one of the attendees signed for Azure subscription and were ready with all the prerequisites installations.

Overall it was a great experience and we are proud to put Nashville on the global map.

Many thanks to Mark Brown, Mary Perisic and Dora Chan from Microsoft for their exception support !!

The exceptional team of GWAB, Kudos !!!

Special Thanks Hitesh Dhingra and all the attendees for making this event a great success. Without their support we would not have been able to make it a great success.

Below is the agenda which we followed at the Event except two exceptions – Keynote by Hitesh D. and inclusion of Access Control Services upon the request of Michael.

We also ran Render Lab, specially created for GWAC by Alan Smith. You can find more details about Render Lab at below Youtube cast.

Group Photo at the Event attached.

Presentations:

Render Lab Statistics at Nashville – Part 1:

Render Lab Statistics at Nashville – Part 2:

About this Video:

Microsoft MVP Vishnu Kumar Tiwari joins us today as he shares with us some insight into Windows Azure AppFabric and some of its best features for IT Pros. Tune in as he covers what benefits there are to private cloud and virtualized IT environments as well as what you can do to prepare your career and organization for cloud computing.

Here is a direct link to the episode:

Hi All,

I am happy to announce that I have been selected as Product Expert for Microsoft's premier Event TechEd 2012. See you all guys at Orlando. Below is the link for more about Tech Ed 2012.

http://northamerica.msteched.com/#fbid=2B3BKPYrGu8

Cheers, Vishnu

Below are some of the monitoring which you should be considering while setting up the SCOM monitoring in Production server. I will continue adding new monitors to this blog post.

What: Routers Failure detection

How: Perform Advanced Discovery by using the computer and device management wizard to add the routers as mentioned object.

What: Monitoring of SQL Server Agent Jobs

How: All object of type SQL 2005 Agent needs to be monitored.

What: Effective SQL Server Monitoring

How: Create diagnostic task for the SQL Server monitoring.

What: Server temperature monitoring and auto shutdown

How: Monitor properties for server temperature and creation of recovery task to run the shutdown command.

What: Performance Counter Monitor for %Processor Time

How: Static Threshold Monitor needs to be created. Static Threshold monitors are used to make sure that an object does not fall outside of safe parameters. Peak value needs to be determined based on historical/best practices data. Once the schedule is set agent will watch for the system to exceed the threshold and an alert or health state can be modified.

What: Restricted User Management

How: OM provides various roles for user access management in OM.

OM Administrator: This role has full access to all aspects of management group.

OM Advanced Operators: This role has ability to override rules and monitors in the management group.

OM Authors: This role has the ability to interact and manage alerts, tasks and views in the management group.

OM Read Only Operators: This role ha ability to view alerts and views in the management group.

What: SCOM Reporting.

How: SQL Server reporting and SCOM reporting need to be installed.

What: Domain Controller issues.

How: Monitoring for all Windows Server 2003 domain controller.

What: DR for SCOM Setup.

How: Need to be setup. Key things to be documented such as reinstall all operations Manager roles in a new management group. Install operations manager agents to all servers that need to be monitored and import the management packs that were installed prior to all failure.

What: Disk space monitoring on each server.

How: Logical disk state view under the Windows Server folder.

What: Alert on home page is down.

How: Web application synthetic transaction to monitor home page of the web site on each server. Configure a management server as a watcher node.

What: Automatically restart the IIS service when %ProcessorTime counter is at or above 90 percent for more than 5 mins.

How: Creation of consecutive samples over time monitor for %Processor Time counter. Add a recovery task to restart the IIS service.

What: Disk space monitoring on each server.

How: Logical disk state view under the Windows Server folder.

What: Performance Graph, critical alerts and state component.

How: Creation of DashBoard view. This view does not specify the data that will appear in the view, instead it is a placeholder for other views so that you can look at multiple views simultaneously.

What: Disk space monitoring on each server.

How: Logical disk state view under the Windows Server folder.

 I have started putting together steps required for BizTalk Server Disater Recovery. I will keep this updated. In case if you need any help and support in Setting up DR you can get in touch with me.

1-      Setting up BizTalk Server at DR Site

a.       Configure these BizTalk Server run-time servers using the BizTalk Configuration Wizard to join them to the production BizTalk group. When configuring the BizTalk Server run-time servers at the disaster recovery site (including the disaster recovery Enterprise Single Sign-On Master Secret server) select No to the question “Is this the master secret server?” and select “Join” to the question “Do you want to create or join a BizTalk Server group?”

b.      After configuring the BizTalk Server run-time disaster recovery servers, create BizTalk host instances on the disaster recovery site that correspond to the production site host instances, but do not start these host instances. For example, if the production site has three Hosts Send, Receive, and Orchestration with instances on server1, server2, and server3, create three corresponding host instances on DRserver1, DRserver2, DRserver3.

c.       All BizTalk Server-related Windows services such as the BizTalk Host Instance and Rules Engine Service at the disaster recovery site should be set to “disabled” in the Services Manager to prevent the disaster recovery site from performing any processing.

2-      Setting up SQL Server

a.       Create a set of SQL Server database instances in the disaster recovery site. To ensure that the disaster recovery SQL Server database instances can provide the same level of performance as the production SQL Server database instances, the disaster recovery SQL Server database instances should be configured with similar hardware and number of physical computers running SQL Server.

b.      Configure log shipping for each production SQL Server database instance to apply to a corresponding SQL Server database instance at the disaster recovery site.

c.       Make sure drive letter(s) on the production site where the database files are stored match the drive letter(s) at the disaster recovery site where the database files are restored. So if the SQL Server database file group is located on G:\data in production, there must be a G:\data directory on the destination (DR) server or the restore will fail.

d.      Create SQL Server security logins for the disaster recovery site that correspond to the production site so that in the event that a failover to the disaster recovery site is required, all required security logins are present on the destination system.

e.      Once installation of the disaster recovery SQL Server instances is completed, perform a full backup of master and msdb databases so that a clean system can be restored in the event that a switch to the disaster recovery site fails.

f.         Set up log shipping for SQL Server. Refer Appendix 2.

3-      BizTalk Application Backup and SQL Server backup

a.       Always keep the latest back up of the applications

b.      Make sure the SQL backup jobs are running and we have the latest backup

c.       Keep the backup of machine.config, registry settings

d.      Keep the MSMQ configuration backup

4-      Backing up IIS – Use the backup and restore scripts.

5-      IIS certificates – install IIS 6.0 Resource Kit.

6-      Recovering from a Disaster

a.       Restoring the BizTalk Group

                                                               i.      Stop all the processing(Refer appendix 1)

                                                             ii.       

b.      Restore SQL Server and BizTalk applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296741(BTS.10).aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa546753.aspx

                                                               i.      Restore SQL Server from Log Shipping – Refer Appendix 3

                                                             ii.      Restore the Master Secret (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296749(BTS.10).aspx)

                                                            iii.      Restoring SQL Server Jobs http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee406928.aspx

                                                           iv.      Restore BAM database by using the BAM backup.

                                                             v.      Resolve all the incomplete BAM activity

c.       IIS and certificates restore

                                                               i.      IIS restore – use IISRestore batch file to restore the IIS.

                                                             ii.      IIsCertDeploy.vbs will be located in %programfiles%\IIS Resources\IIsCertDeploy.  Use below query to restore the certficates.

 - iiscertdeploy.vbs -e d:\webbackups\certs\site1.pfx

 -i w3svc/1 -p site1pwd -q On

d.      Recovering the Runtime Computers

                                                               i.      Update Runtime Computers http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296621(BTS.10).aspx

                                                             ii.      If receive locations and send ports are not affected by the loss of the production site, it may not be necessary to reconfigure the application with disaster recovery-specific locations. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296699(BTS.10).aspx

e.      Troubleshooting Log Shipping http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296675(BTS.10).aspx

7-       

Appendix 1 – Stopping BizTalk Server Processing

To stop application processing on the source system, ensure that no connections are open between the production BizTalk Server runtime computers and the SQL Server computers that house the BizTalk Server databases. Follow these steps to stop application processing on the production BizTalk Server runtime computers:

1.     Stop the IIS so that no new request should come to Service Bus.

2.     Disable all receive locations on the BizTalk Server computers in the BizTalk group. Make a note of all receive locations that are disabled so that these receive locations can be re-enabled later. This will stop BizTalk Server from processing incoming messages.

3.     Stop all host instances from running on the BizTalk Server computers in the group. This can be done from the BizTalk Server Administration console. Make a note of all the host instances that were stopped so that these host instances can be restarted later.

4.     Stop all SQL Server Agent jobs related to BizTalk Server on the SQL Server computers that house BizTalk Server databases.

5.     Stop any other BizTalk Server services in Services Manager that may be running on the BizTalk Server computers in the group, for example, the Enterprise Single Sign-On Service and the Rule Engine Update Service. Make a note of the services that are stopped so that they can be restarted later.

6.     Close all applications that connect to the SQL Server computers that house BizTalk Server databases. This includes instances of the BizTalk Server Administration console, Visual Studio 2010 and any other installed BizTalk applications.

7.     Verify that there is no database activity generated by BizTalk Server. Use SQL Server Enterprise Manager or SQL Server 2005 Management Studio to see what processes are connected to the SQL Server computers that house BizTalk Server databases. This can be done by clicking to expand Management, Current Activity in SQL Server Enterprise Manager or by clicking to expand Management and Activity Monitor in SQL Server 2005 Management Studio. Then click to select Process Info. Alternatively use the system stored procedures sp_who or sp_who2 to identify any open connections to the SQL Server computers that house BizTalk Server databases. If there are any processes connected, locate them and terminate them normally; or as a last resort, right-click each process in the Process Info pane in SQL Server Enterprise Manager or SQL Server 2005 Management Studio and click Kill process to terminate the connection.

8.     Additional database processing may be occurring in application databases. If these databases will be restored, ensure that all processing is stopped.

Appendix 2 – Log Shipping

1-      Log in as a member of the BizTalk Server Administrators group to perform this procedure. You must have the same version of SQL Server on both the source and destination systems. SQL Server must be installed in the same relative location on both the source and destination systems.

2-      The directory for SQL transaction log (.LDF files) on the source system must also exist on the destination system. If this directory is not on the destination system, create the directory with the same name and permissions as on the source system.

3-      Open the SQL Server management studio.

4-      Connect to appropriate SQL server

5-      Run below script on master database –  

a.       C\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Schema\LogShipping_Destination_Schema.sql

b.      C\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\Schema\LogShipping_Destination_Logic.sql

c.       Ad Hoc Distributed Queries on destination system by using below query

d.       

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;

RECONFIGURE;

sp_configure 'Ad Hoc Distributed Queries', 1;

RECONFIGURE;

GO

SELECT a.*

FROM OPENROWSET('SQLNCLI', 'Server=Seattle1;Trusted_Connection=yes;',

     'SELECT GroupName, Name, DepartmentID

      FROM AdventureWorks2008R2.HumanResources.Department

      ORDER BY GroupName, Name') AS a;

GO

e.      Please make sure that query should execute in first attempt else you need to execute all the steps from step one. Execute below query. For more than one server please repeat this for all the servers.

exec bts_ConfigureBizTalkLogShipping @nvcDescription = 'LogShippingSolution_ENV',

@nvcMgmtDatabaseName = 'BizTalkMgmtDB',

@nvcMgmtServerName = 'BizTalk Database Server',

@SourceServerName = null, -- null indicates that this destination server restores all databases

@fLinkServers = 1 -- 1 automatically links the server to the management database

f.        Verify below jobs are created as in SQL Server Agent jobs. We need to monitor these jobs and these jobs should not fail.

                                                               i.      BTS Log Shipping Get Backup History

                                                             ii.      BTS Server Log Shipping Restore Databases

                                                            iii.      BTS Log Shipping Restore To Mark

g.       Open C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\Bins32\Schema\Restore on the BizTalk server.

h.      Edit SchemaUpdateInfo.xml  replace the name of the Source System and Destination System.

i.         Add two more entries for BAM.

<Database Name="BAM Alerts Application DB" oldDBName="BAMAlertsApplication" oldDBServer="SourceServer" newDBName=" BAMAlertsApplication" newDBServer="DestinationServer"/>

<Database Name="BAM Alerts Instance DB" oldDBName="BAMAlertsNSMain" oldDBServer="SourceServer" newDBName="BAMAlertsNSMain" newDBServer="DestinationServer"/>

j.        Since we have more than two databases add other two messageboxes and set isMaster=0

k.       SAVE the file and exist.

Appendix 3 – Restoring Database

1-      If there is only one server in the destination system, make sure that all of the log backup sets (except for the most recent set) have been restored. For more information, see Viewing the History of Restored Backups. If all the log backup sets have not been restored, and the restore job is not currently running, run the restore job (manually if necessary). If there are outstanding backup sets that can be restored, the job will process them until they are all restored.

2-      If there are multiple servers in the destination system, all servers must be restored to the same backup set. You must view the restore history on each server and make sure that the most recent log backup set restored is the same on all servers. If it is not, you must manually run the restore job on each server that needs the most recent log backup set restored.

3-      The adm_BackupHistory table is the central history point for the log shipping process for the source system. All backup work performed is recorded to this table.

                                                               i.      Connect to SQL Server management studio Disable three Log shipping related jobs i.e. “BTS Log Shipping – Get Backup History”, “BTS Server Log Shipping Restore Databases”

4-      Start the job and “BTS Log Shipping - Restore To Mark” at step 1. If the job is successful, SQL Server Agent jobs and BizTalk Server databases are restored to the destination system.

5-       Navigate to “drive:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\Schema\Restore”. Execute cscript UpdateDatabase.vbs SampleUpdateInfo.xml on the BizTalk Server.

6-      Run the script mention in Step 5 on each BizTalk Server.

7-       

7^th and 8^th October 25, 2011 were some of my great days when I participated at c0c0n 2011. The event witnessed great talks, demos, workshops, tools and exploit release, book release by Vivek Ramchandran,  panel discussions on Cyber security at Kochin, Kerla. We had delegates from around the world and from all across the country. Participation of various government organizations such as Navy and Computer Society of India made me believe that India has also got one more warfare and that is Cyber warfare.  The event was organized by my mentor and fellow MVP Mr. Manu Zakaria and the reception which I received was exemplary. I presented the session on “Security and Privacy risk in cloud computing” and it was well receivedl by all the genre of audience. I would like to thank Manu for organizing such a great event and to our MVP lead Mr. Abhishek Kant who continuously encourages to all of us to participate and contribute at such forums. Here is the inaugural pic from c0c0n. 

fo

Hi All,

I am watching the //Build/ Keynote live Steven Sinosky talking lots of good things about Winodws 8. Looks like it is going to be a great
product. Tagline for Windows 8 is Winodws reimagined.
1- Backward Compatibility with Winodws 7
2- Windows app development kit 

3- Building metor style apps

4-Use C#, HTML, Java script to create applications for Windows

5-Photo Doodle is the one application which MS showcased today.. just 8-10 lines of code Great !!

6-Create integration with social networks like Facebook

7-Metro style controls

8-Great licensing model for Windows apps

9-Windows app development kit

10-Great XAML features

11-N/W API support

12-Configurable search

13-Security features for H/Ws

14-Great power saving capabilities

15- Windows 8 can support upto 8 TB of Memory !!!!

Awesome !!!!

Cheers, Vishnu