biztalk server – Note to self

Recapping Integrate 2020

Last week I’ve attended the Integrate conference once again. It was my 5th time attending the conference, and the 4th time I’ve participate as a speaker.

But Integrate 2020 was quite a different experience from the last years. Dubbed Integrate 2020 Remote, to reflect the fact that was yet another event that had to adapt to the pandemic reality that assaulted the planet since the end of last year. Kovai, the company formerly know as BizTalk 360, and the event organizer since its inception in 2012, took some time to decide that the event would go ahead, but when decided that it would be in a new format, didn’t pull any stops to get it running. With almost 1000 online attendees – which is impressive for a paid event, Integrate 2020 had 28 speakers, between Microsoft Program Managers and Microsoft MVPs and as many technical sessions distributed across three days.

Upgrading BizTalk 2013 to BizTalk 2020

Wow, it has been a long while since I wrote a post about good old BizTalk! But we had some interesting findings this week trying to run an in-place upgrade from BizTalk Server 2013 to BizTalk Server 2020.

I know that in-place upgrade is one of the cardinal sins of BizTalk, together with not running the BizTalk database jobs or having a single host to rule them all! But before you take my BizTalk fan club membership card, just understand that we had 5 different environments and so much red tape and reconfiguration for a side by side upgrade, that it was worth taking the risk.

And here is what we found during this process. I say we because although I helped troubleshooting, one of the best consultants from my team, Peter Kenyon, had the pleasure of experience this particular kind of hell – I am pretty sure I owing lunch after all of that…

Integrate 2019 in Review

I was on my flight back from London, returning from Integrate 2019, when I started this blog post. It was a very long flight, around 24 hours each way, but even if the jetlag hit me really hard this time around, it wsa worth it. Integrate grew from an initiative from a group of BizTalk MVPs, into the premier conference for Microsoft Integration technologies. It was my honour to be a presenter for the third year in a row, presenting alongside a Microsoft team comprised of Product Managers, Architects and Engineers – the people that actually design and implement the technologies I use on a daily basis – and legends from the Microsoft Integration community like Sandro Pereira, Steefan Wiggers, Richard Seroter, Michael Stephenson and Kent Weare, just to name a few.

The conference is run by Kovai Co – the company formerly known as BizTalk 360 – as a very well oiled machine. A large team from Kovai dedicate months ahead preparing the conference. This edition of Integrate was the largest yet, with over 480 participants, with 26 speakers and 28 sessions, across 3 days.

If I had to choose one theme from the conference this year, would be governance. Seems like most of the integration related technologies got to a stage where the core set of features are available and companies are using them actively. All that activity highlighted the requirement for better tooling and guidance around various aspects of the governance of the platform. From DevOps guidance to security and bettern integration between on-premises and the cloud, pretty much every product group had recent or new announcements around that theme.

Combining API Management with Azure Relays

As you might remember, in June I was at the Integrate 2018, doing a presentation called Exposing BizTalk to the World. It was my second time presenting on what became the premier conference on Microsoft Integration and it was a fantastic experience. It wouldn’t be fair to talk about Integrate without thanking Theta for sponsoring my trip and time of work and BizTalk360 for organizing a great event.

But why am I talking about this almost four months later? Apart from the shameless plug, during that presentation suggested a couple of ways to expose BizTalk endpoints. One of the options was using API Management to expose BizTalk receive locations, and the other was using Azure Relay to bypass firewall and securely expose BizTalk endpoints.

A couple of weeks ago, I’ve actually combine both technologies to securely expose a BizTalk endpoint. On this scenario, the client needed to create an API that would be exposed to partners, but wanted to reuse a series of BizTalk processes that were already implemented. As this was a pilot that should highlight the agility and fast time to market that can be achieved with the cloud, we didn’t have time to go through the process of exposing their environment through the firewall and whitelist API Management. Continue reading “Combining API Management with Azure Relays”

BizTalk Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016 SP2

BizTalk Server 2016 Cumulative Update 5 was released last week. One of the items in the CU list was this KB – adding support in BizTalk Server 2016 for SQL Server 2016 SP2.

Why is this important? Because this service pack simplifies the deployment of SQL components when setting up BizTalk Server 2016 highly available environments. Continue reading “BizTalk Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016 SP2”