Initial Configuration

Overview

The Management Pack automatically discovers instances of the BizTalk service running within the Operations Manager 2007 management group, and deploys the BizTalk monitoring agent to those servers (aka Monitored Systems). Once the agents have been deployed, they automatically begin monitoring BizTalk applications for performance and exception issues.

The agent monitors for problems in the .NET elements of BizTalk applications, as indicated on the diagram by . These elements include adapters, pipelines, maps and orchestrations. With the AVIcode .NET MP also installed, you can monitor .NET Windows Services, Web Services and COM+ components that your BizTalk application communicates with, or any other ASP.NET application hosted under IIS.

Discovery

Once the Application Management Pack has been installed, it initiates a 2-level discovery process for BizTalk servers and components:

The first level performs discovery at 24 hour intervals for all BizTalk servers and hosts. This step must complete in order for the management pack to function correctly. The Operations Console 'AVIcode BizTalk Application Monitoring''BizTalk Server state' view will become populated with the BizTalk servers as they are discovered. The management pack will then automatically deploy and configure the agents to the discovered machines.
The second level performs discovery at 6 hour intervals for all other BizTalk adapters, applications, maps, orchestrations and pipelines.

Information about BizTalk adapters, applications, maps, orchestrations and pipelines is stored in the BizTalk database. In order for the discovery script to access this information, it must have access to the database server and the BizTalk database. Because the discovery script normally runs under the local system (action) account, it may not have the appropriate permissions to access the database, but can be granted access by correctly configuring the 'Run As' profile. If discovery does fail, correct the Run As account information, and force discovery to take place (see below for information on how to know when discovery has failed and about forcing discovery to take place).

.NET Enterprise Agent Deployment Group

The members of the .NET Enterprise Agent Deployment Group were selected when the Management Pack was installed. To modify the group membership:

Open the Operations Console
Go to the "Authoring View"
Navigate to "Groups"
Select ".NET Enterprise Agent Deployment Group"
Right-click and select 'Properties'

Explicit Members Tab

To add Explicit members to the group, select the Explicit Members tab.

Search for "Computer" objects.
Select desired computers from the list of the returned Computer objects and click Add.
Click OK to close the Object Selection window

Dynamic Members Tab

To add Dynamic members to the group, select the Excluded Members tab.

Click Create/Edit
Specify a query for objects that will include desired computers.
Click OK to close the Query Builder window.

Excluded Members Tab

To Exclude members from the group, select the Dynamic Members tab.

Click Exclude Objects...
Search for objects to be excluded.>
Select objects from the 'Available items' list and click Add to add them to the 'Selected objects' list.
Click OK to close the Object Exclusion window.
Click OK to close the Object Selection window.

Determining Discovery Success/Failure

You can determine whether discovery for adapters, applications, maps, orchestrations and pipelines has failed if:

In the Operations Console, only the global 'BizTalk Server' object has been discovered
Running the 'Check BizTalk Discovery account' task on a discovered BizTalk host results in the following error message being displayed: Action Account Used for BizTalk Discovery does not have sufficient rights to access BizTalk management database. To resolve, please add OpsMgr Health service account to "BizTalk Server Operators Group" or configure Operations Manager Action Account for "BizTalk Server Discovery Account" run as profile and add it to "BizTalk Server Operators Group".

Correcting the Discovery Account and Permissions

If discovery fails for any adapters, applications, maps, orchestrations and pipelines, several methods can be used to correct the configuration of the discovery account. There are two methods for ensuring that there are sufficient permissions to complete the discovery process: Configure a run-as account, or add permissions to the local computer (action) account.

Configure a 'Run As' profile

You will need to use an account from either the BizTalk Operators Group or the BizTalk Administrators Group to configure as the 'Run As' profile for BizTalk discovery. You may: 1) select an existing domain account from one of the groups, or 2) create a new domain account and add it to one of the groups.

To configure the 'Run As' profile to use the selected account:

Open the Operations Manager 2007 Console.
Go to the "Administration" "Run As Configuration" "Profiles"
Select the 'BizTalk Server Discovery Account'
Right-click, and 'Properties'
Go to the 'Run As Accounts' tab
Click New... and select the new 'Run As' profile
Click OK
Click OK

Add permissions to the Action account

To add permissions to the action account, you can either make the action account a member of either the BizTalk Operators Group or the BizTalk Administrators Group, or give the action account permissions for the BizTalk management database.

If the action account is the Local System account, then use the computer account when adding permissions.

Forcing Discovery

If discovery for adapters, applications, maps, orchestrations and pipelines fails, it will normally take 6 hours before a new discovery attempt takes place unless discovery is forced.

Forcing Discovery Method #1

Restart the Health Service This method is not recommended for production servers because it requires having to restart the OpsMgr main windows service.

Forcing Discovery Method #2

This method requires changing the discovery interval to 1 minute (for example), waiting for the next discovery, and then changing the discovery interval back to 6 hours. This method is much longer, but no any harmful operation is done during it.

Go to "Authoring""Management Pack Objects" "Object Discoveries"
Click Change Scope
Select the BizTalk Application MP objects that correspond to the BizTalk orchestrations, etc.
For every object, select 'Overrides' Override the Discovery'For all objects of type:<object type>'
Set the 'Interval Second' parameter value to 60 (1 minute)
wait for the next discovery and ensure that it passes successfully (objects appear and no errors were raised)
Set the 'Interval Second' parameter value back to 21600(6 hours)

Initial Settings

When monitoring is initially enabled for BizTalk applications, the default configuration is as follows:

BizTalk Host Resource Utilization data collection is fully enabled
Failure monitoring for connectivity failures and security events is enabled
Failure monitoring for critical code failures, is disabled
Performance tracing is disabled.
Soap Adapters monitoring is disabled

Changing the Settings

The agents may be configured via the actions in the Operations Console.

If the actions are not visible, select 'View''Actions' in the Operations Console. Actions may be applied to orchestrations, pipelines, adapters, maps, or applications as a whole.

Selecting the Target

To select an object to apply an action to:

Open the Operations Manager 2007 Console.
Select the "Monitoring View"
Select AVIcode BizTalk Application Monitoring
Select one of the following items:

BizTalk Hosts state view

BizTalk Server state view

Select a host or server from the list on the right
Select an action from the list of applicable actions

Last update: Thursday, December 09, 2010 09:42:11 AM