At our annual event Integrate, Microsoft announced last year that BizTalk Server 2020 should have released in the first quarter of 2019. Only two weeks in the new year, Microsoft has released BizTalk Server 2020 (v3.13.717.0)! In this blog, we want to update you on what’s new in this version of the product.
Similar to earlier versions of the product, BizTalk Server 2020 comes in 4 flavors:
You can download these products when you have an Enterprise MSDN account.
During Integrate 2019, Paul Larsen, the Program Manager who is responsible for BizTalk Server, already highlighted which new features are coming in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020. You can read a recap about Paul’s session here.
As you can understand from Paul’s session, we were already expecting platform alignment. More importantly, BizTalk Server 2020 contains all features from BizTalk Server 2016, including the 3 Feature Packs, which have been released.
You can find the complete set of new features here
But, let’s have a look at some of the new features and capabilities.
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Support for newer platforms |
BizTalk Server 2020 adds support for the following Microsoft platforms: |
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Operational Data Monitoring and Analytics. |
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Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS |
Using Visual Studio Team Services, you can define multi-server deployments of BizTalk Server 2020, and then maintain those systems throughout the application lifecycle. |
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Management APIs |
Manage your environment remotely using the new REST APIs with full Swagger support. |
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Advanced Scheduling |
New and improved scheduling capabilities in Adapters. |
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Backup to Azure Blob Storage |
When deploying BizTalk Server to Azure VMs, you can backup BizTalk Server databases to Azure blob storage. |
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Event Hubs Adapter |
Using the new Event Hub Adapter, BizTalk Server can send and receive messages with Azure Event Hubs, where BizTalk Server can function as both an event publisher and subscriber, as part of a new Azure cloud-based event-driven application. |
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Office 365 Adapters |
Leverage the power of BizTalk in newer office automation workflows by integrating with Adapters that allow you to send or receive Office 365 emails, receive or transmit Office 365 calendar events, and create Office 365 contacts. |
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Group Managed Service Accounts |
Extend windows GMSA support to BizTalk operations and services. |
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Audit Log |
Making BizTalk further secure by maintaining audit trails of all management operations. |
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New Read-Only Operator role |
Brand new read-only operator role in facilitating the dev-ops model, where access to production stamp is provided without the ability to update anything. |
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Additional updates |
· Move to new long term supported Microsoft OLEDB Driver for SQL Server · Support for SSO Affiliate applications in the SFTP adapter · SQL Availability Group support for BAM DTS Package via SSIS Catalog · Partially disabled receive locations · Throughput improvements for Dynamic Send Ports with Ordered Delivery |
Some features of the product are deprecated or removed from the product. Here’s the list:
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Program |
Status |
Replacement |
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Samples |
Removed |
Removed from BizTalk Server installation |
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POP3 and SMTP adapters |
Deprecated |
Office 365 adapters |
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Support for ACS authentication in adapters |
Removed |
SAS authentication |
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SOAP adapter |
Deprecated |
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Old SQL adapter |
Removed |
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BPEL support |
Deprecated |
None |
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JDE OneWorld adapter |
Deprecated |
None |
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OWC redist |
Removed |
None |
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BAM Portal |
Deprecated |
None |
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WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter |
Deprecated |
None |
Based on the above lists, and besides the already expected features and improvements, a few features catch the eye.
Until now, no auditing was available for any operations performed against the BizTalk environment. Luckily, from BizTalk Server 2020 on, the Administration console provides auditing of operations. To be able to use this feature, you will have to turn it on in the Group Settings screen.
The auditing data is stored in the Management database, and you can access it via the Operational Services. At the moment, the supported operations are:
Although this is a good start, multiple important operations are still missing; think of starting/stopping of ports, orchestrations, and host instances. We hope that Microsoft adds such operations in the future.
Read more about this feature here.
Earlier, Microsoft has announced that .NET 4.8 will be supported.
The BizTalk Operator role has changed. Where before, it was possible to perform actions like stopping/starting ports and changing the port configuration, this role is now completely read-only. This can certainly be useful for facilitating DevOps scenarios.
When accessing the BizTalk Server 2020 Admin console as a BizTalk Operator, all the operations are still accessible. However, when an operator tries, for example, to stop a port, an error message shows up, and the operation becomes blocked. Unfortunately, the error message is not always clear that the operation is blocked due to insufficient permissions.
Microsoft has decided to deprecate the BAM portal. Probably due to the new capabilities to push data to Azure, they decided to deprecate the old-fashioned BAM portal. In case you are using BAM, and you are considering upgrading to BizTalk Server 2020, you can still install and configure the BAM portal from the BizTalk installer and configuration wizard; you won’t be left in the dark.
Multiple updates in this area as well. For example, Microsoft deprecates the POP3 and the SMTP adapters in favor of the Office 365 adapters, which appeared in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs. Next, the old BizTalk SQL adapter has been removed and replaced by the WCF-SQL adapter, and the JDE OneWorld and the WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter have both been deprecated.
The BizTalk360 product team has eagerly followed the developments around BizTalk Server 2020, and we are glad that BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. For BizTalk360, it is evident that the product must support all recent versions of BizTalk Server.
That’s why we made the latest released versions of BizTalk360 and Atomic Scope compatible with BizTalk Server 2020!
BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. This is the 11th version of the product since its inception in 2000. Although we have already seen most of the features of this release (in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs), this is still a useful release. Especially when you are still on versions older than BizTalk Server 2016, it will certainly be worth upgrading or migrating to this release.
Read this article to get more insights about BizTalk migration
