Top-10 -features-BizTalk360-released-2019

Top 10 Features of BizTalk360 Released in 2019

Published on : Jan 6, 2020

Category : BizTalk360 Update

saranya

Author

In BizTalk360, we have a practice of releasing new versions with significant features in every quarter. In 2019, we have released 4 major versions. In this blog, you can get to know about the top 10 stimulating features we have shipped in 2019.

1. Send Port Group Operations and Monitoring

You can completely manage and monitor your Send Port Groups from BizTalk360. 

Operations – Send Port Groups can be Start/Stop/Enlist/Unenlist from BizTalk360. With this capability, it is possible to manage the operation of BizTalk applications (Start & Stop) for all the artifacts of each application in BizTalk360.

Monitoring – Create an alarm, map the Send Port Groups for monitoring by setting up the expected state. If any threshold violation occurs, you will be notified. You can also setup auto-healing for this monitoring; once the Send Port Group goes down, then BizTalk360 will try to auto-heal it to the expected state.

This implementation makes life easier for the BizTalk support engineers without context switching between the BizTalk admin console and BizTalk360.

send-port-operation

2. Database Size Monitoring

Database Size monitoring helps to monitor the Data and log file size of the BizTalk and BizTalk360 databases, by simply configuring the error and warning threshold values for the database and log file sizes.

Below are the BizTalk databases that can be monitor using BizTalk360:

  • BizTalkDTADb
  • BizTalkMgmtDb
  • BizTalkMsgBoxDb
  • BizTalkRuleEngineDb
  • BAM databases (BAMPrimaryImport, BAMAlertsApplication, BAMArchive, BAMStarSchema)
  • SSODB

database-size-monitoring-biztalk360

3. SQL Server Cluster Monitoring

Cluster SQL Server can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server Network name. BizTalk360 will start monitoring the currently active node. In case of a failover, BizTalk360 will automatically take the active server for monitoring.

The following resources can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server:

  • CPU & Memory
  • NT Services
  • Disks (available disk space)
  • Event Logs

sql-server-cluster-monitoring

4. Host Instance Monitoring

BizTalk Host Instances(clustered/non clustered ) can be monitored by setting the Expected State as started/stopped/AtleastoneActive. An alert will get triggered if there is a mismatch between the expected and current state of the host instance.

The state AtleastOneActive will guarantee that at least one host instance is running and no downtime happened for that host/server.

You can also enable AutoCorrect for Clustered and Non-Clustered host instances monitoring.

host-instance-monitoring-biztalk360

5. Configurable Polling Interval for Monitoring

By default, the BizTalk360 monitoring service checks the status of all configured artifacts every 1 min. However, BizTalk360 provides an option for the user to configure the polling interval. Based on the configured polling interval, the monitoring service will determine the monitor status of the endpoints.

manage-polling-interval

6. SMTP Notification Channel

The SMTP Notification Channel provides an ability to create email distribution lists by grouping email ids based on the business needs.

Easily using the same email recipients for multiple alarms was not possible in earlier versions; the recipient’s details need to be entered for each alarm. To overcome this, we have introduced the SMTP Notification channel, through which the user can configure email distribution lists under one channel and can be mapped to multiple alarms. In addition to this, we have added email grouping for Up Alert and AutoCorrect Alert. With this, the user can configure different email ids to receive Up and AutoCorrect alerts.

7. BizTalk Group Dashboard

In BizTalk360’s Monitoring dashboard it was not possible to view the status of all the mapped artifacts in a single view; the user needed to change the alarm each and every time to view the status of the mapped artifacts of each alarm.

To overcome this challenge, we have introduced the BizTalk Group Dashboard which gives a consolidated view of the status of all the artifacts which are mapped to all the alarms in an environment.

The “BizTalk Group Dashboard” will automatically pick up all the artifacts (which are mapped to any of the BizTalk360 alarms) and displays the status of the artifacts in a graphical manner. Also, the error/warning details of the displayed artifacts are shown in a grid view.

biztalk-group-dashboard-bitalk360

8. Subscriptions (Message Box)

In addition, to retrieve the service instance and message details, BizTalk360 allows users to execute queries to retrieve the details of the subscription from the message box database. The subscription details such as Name, Service Name, state, subscription type, service instance id will be retrieved on message box query execution.

subscription-biztalk360

9. APM Integration

BizTalk360 is a one-stop tool for operations, monitoring and application performance management (APM) of BizTalk environments.

We get to see a few of our customers utilizing modern SaaS-based Application Monitoring/Analytics platforms like New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace, etc., for their global enterprise analytics/monitoring requirements.

To support that we have integrated the following tools in BizTalk360.

  • NewRelic
  • AppDynamic (new)
  • Dynatrace (new)

BizTalk360 Analytics service will start pushing the BizTalk performance data to your environment. With this, you can see the BizTalk server related performance metrics such as BizTalk/SQL Server health, Host Performance, BizTalk Messaging Performance, Throttling Performance, etc., in AppDynamics and DynaTrace environment.

apm-integration-biztalk360

10. Analytics Data Collection Optimization

We have fine-tuned the performance in analytics data collection. To improve the performance and tracking data collection we are providing an option for the user to select the required performance counters on each type. This way, BizTalk360 will start collecting data only for the selected counters.

analytics-data-collection-biztalk360

Reporting Improvements

BizTalk360 provides the option for users to be able to generate PDF documents of critical performance metrics at specific time periods depending on the business.

In BizTalk Reporting, we have introduced an additive widget called Custom SQL Query widget through which SQL queries can be mapped to get the top 100 query result as a report based on the scheduled configuration.

In addition to this, we have extended our support for Analytics custom widget. With this, you can retrieve performance metrics of the BizTalk environment such as Messaging Performance, Message Transmission failure rate, Server performance, etc., and the SQL Query results as a report. Based on the configured schedule you can receive that report in your email box.

Conclusion

Considering the feedback from our customers, BizTalk360 will continue to provide more useful features. Why not give BizTalk360 a try! It takes about 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your own BizTalk Environments.