In complex and mission-critical environments, keeping these systems healthy is crucial for the uninterrupted business operations. However, tracking the performance of these environments can be tedious. A BizTalk Administrator’s main goal is to maintain a high-performing integration platform.
They can use the following tools to help in maintaining the healthier BizTalk environment.
In a business integration scenario, it is important to use the BizTalk Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) to maintain best practices. The BPA tool ensures that BizTalk artifacts are configured and deployed according to the best practices.
The BizTalk Best Practices Analyzer helps prepare for audits and reviews of host instances and application configurations. It follows Microsoft’s best practices checklist to identify any disparities in the BizTalk group.
BPA Analyses the configuration of BizTalk Server and its components to ensure that follow the best practices. Host Instances configuration, infrastructure capacity to handle the message processing are key areas in the analyser scan.
It Includes checks for a wide range of best practices, covering aspects like security, performance, and scalability.
Schedule the scan periodically to ensure ongoing compliance check in the BizTalk group.
BHM is a comprehensive tool for monitoring the health of the BizTalk Servers. It provides the detailed reports on the current state of the BizTalk Group, including health, configuration, and performance metrics.
Monitoring the various aspects of the BizTalk environment in real-time including database health, host instance status, and resource usage.
It generates the extensive reports that include performance metrics, artifact configuration, error logs and other diagnostic information.
Analyzer allows the administrators to create custom rules on the specific health and performance criteria. BizTalk Administrators can configure the multiple BHM Profiles to track the status of the database, host instances and infrastructure in the BizTalk Group.
Stores the historical data for trend analysis and capacity planning. This provides the insights to scale up the infrastructure upgrade.
BizTalk Health Monitor is integrated with BizTalk360 to manage the health monitor reporting. The users can schedule and view the reports that are generated from the BHM Tool.
BizTalk360, BHM monitoring provides the enterprise-wide monitoring with ability to configure the multiple monitoring rules and alert the administrators/business users, when a rule violation occurs in the latest health monitor run.
The users have often wondered why there are two tools (BizTalk Health Monitor and Best Practices Analyzer) are available to manage the health of the BizTalk environment.
BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) and BizTalk Best Practice Analyzer (BPA) are tools designed to assist in the optimization of Microsoft BizTalk Server environments. Both the tools are serving the different purposes with distinct features.
BizTalk360 is one stop tool for all your BizTalk needs, integrating most of the essential BizTalk tools to eliminate the need for switching between multiple windows.. BPA is one BizTalk Tool which is missing in the BizTalk360 Armoury. In feedback portal, users have requested the integration of BizTalk Best Practices Analyzer into BizTalk360″.
The BPA tool integration helps the BizTalk Administrator and Architect to follow the best practices in the configuration, deployment, and infrastructure settings. Perhaps, Best Practices Analyzer reports provide the BizTalk Administrator’s insight best practice is off track.
To configure the BPA Tool, the Best Practices Analyzer Tool must be installed on at least one of the BizTalk Servers. In the BizTalk Server cluster setup, BPA tool needs to configure in both the nodes of BizTalk Server (Active & Passive).
However, prerequisites meet in the BizTalk group, BizTalk360 super users can configure BPA scan schedule to generate the Best Practices report. To execute the scan from BizTalk360, the user must have access to the respective server where BPA is installed.
BizTalk360 monitoring service, will automatically pick and lists the available node of BizTalk Server to generate the scan report.
User can also automate the scanning by setting up a schedule. For instance, to assess the environment health monthly, monthly schedule can configure.
Typically, the BPA Tool scans the BizTalk group for the best practices compliance based on the configuration, critical jobs status and infrastructure.
When the BPA Tool detects that the critical practice fails to adhere to the compliance, it will fall under the Critical issue, similarly less critical practice is grouped under Warning and nice to have practices are categorized under the Information.
BizTalk360 super user have the provision to skip the few best practices rules, that do not apply to their BizTalk group. The skipped or hidden items are displayed under the Hidden category.
The users can view the historical scan reports with an option to download the report in PDF or Excel format. On the other hand, BizTalk360 super users can share the Best Practices analyzer reports to recipients via email.
The BizTalk Administrators can benefit from the Best Practices Analyzer Integration in the following aspects,
Best Practices Analyzer Tool Integration in BizTalk360 helps the Administrators to follows the best practices in the BizTalk environment!
Following the best practices and guidelines for designing and deployment of the BizTalk artifacts is important to ensure the integration solution is scalable, maintainable, and reliable.
To know more about the BizTalk360 features, try out the free trial or book a demo.
