Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

11.11. Summary

Administering BizTalk is not a trivial task. This chapter began by illustrating that a BizTalk application typically involves lots of components, including IIS, SQL Server, SharePoint, and others, all of which need to be managed and maintained effectively. We then highlighted the tools that BizTalk comes with, such as the BizTalk Administration Console and BTSTask, which are incredibly powerful in the right hands.

It is very important that all application deployments are planned and controlled. The BizTalk Administration Console allows you to import and export MSI files containing the BizTalk application and other resources, such as additional .NET assemblies that may be required. The preparation before any deployment should not just be limited to making sure that the application code is right. It is important to ensure that all the necessary processes and procedures have been agreed upon and documented, and that proper training has been provided to the necessary personnel. Training BizTalk operations staff is often the most neglected area. This is dangerous because it can lead to mistakes being made that result in downtime. Wherever possible, you should automate administrative tasks. BizTalk provides BTSTask to automate deployment tasks.

To take advantage of BizTalk's scalability, it is important to separate the send, receive, processing, and tracking functions into their own dedicated hosts. This means that all the functions run in separate threads, thus eliminating ...