Host Instances

The BizTalk host instance serves as the operational hub where message processing, reception, and transmission take place in real-time. Ensuring the seamless operation of host instances is crucial within a BizTalk environment. BizTalk360 simplifies this task for its users through its Host Instance Monitoring feature. With BizTalk360, users can monitor their BizTalk host instances by setting the desired Expected State.

Setting up monitoring for Host Instances

1. Log in to the BizTalk360 application.
2. Navigate to Monitoring -> Manage Mapping -> BizTalk Environment -> Host Instance.
3. Select the Alarm (see Manage Alarms) from the drop-down for which you would like to associate the alerts.
4. Select the checkboxes against the Host Instances that you wish to monitor.
5. Set the value of the 'Expected State' by selecting the value from the drop-down. For instance, if you want to make sure the Host Instance(s) is/are in the Started state, set up the value from the drop-down list to 'Started'. Once set, if the Host Instance is not in the started state, BizTalk360 will send notifications.
6. If the current state of the mapped host instance matches the expected state, the monitor status will be set as Healthy. If there is a contradiction between the expected and current states, the monitor status will be set as Critical. If the mapped host instances are in a critical state, they will be shown in the monitoring dashboard, group dashboard and listed in the errors and warnings page. Additionally, notifications will be sent to the users regarding the violation of the artifacts.

Monitoring Clustered and Non-Clustered Host Instances

Many large enterprises opt for BizTalk Server high availability to ensure the smooth processing of their business transactions. Setting up a Windows failover cluster provides a guarantee that BizTalk messages will continue to be processed even if one of the BizTalk Servers experiences downtimes.

Clustered Host Instances play a critical role in this setup by ensuring that business transactions are seamlessly handled. When active host instances become unavailable, the passive cluster node takes over processing duties, maintaining continuity in transaction processing.

BizTalk360 has the capability of monitoring clustered and non-clustered host instances. Setting up monitoring for clustered instances is the same as monitoring all other artifacts in a BizTalk Server environment. You need to create an alarm and associate the alarm with the artifacts, in order to be able to monitor the host instances. In this case, configuring monitoring for clustered host instances happens in the same place as normal host instances, under BizTalk Environment. The clustered host instances are indicated with color code and clustered node symbol. Select the clustered nodes and set the expected state as Exactly one Active to avoid downtime.  

Active - Passive Clustered Host Instances (Exactly One Active)

In a Windows fail-over cluster setup, the expected state of Host Instances is started in the active server. In this case, the passive node is unavailable to determine the state. The clustered host instance is monitored to make sure it remains running only on the active server. If monitoring is enabled for a clustered host instance, you will be notified if the state of the host instance running on the Active server is in contradiction with the expected state set for monitoring.

Active - Active Clustered Host Instances (At least one active)

To accommodate large message volumes, some enterprises implement an Active-Active Host setup for their BizTalk Host Instances. This configuration distributes the workload of the BizTalk Host across multiple nodes of Host Instances. Monitoring Active-Active host instances offers the flexibility to monitor them with the criterion of "At least one active" host instance. The monitoring service continuously evaluates the state of host instances across the configured nodes within the BizTalk Server environment. It will alert the users when the Host Instances are not in their expected state. 

Auto Correct Functionality

With the Auto Correct functionality, administrators can set up monitoring on any "State-based" artifact and let the monitoring service try to automatically recover the artifact any time when there is a mismatch between the "Expected State" and the "Current State". For instance, administrators can set up monitoring on the Host Instances(s) and additionally set up the auto correct functionality for the Expected State of the artifact (which should be "Stopped").

Whenever the host instance goes down/gets stopped, there will be a mismatch in the state and the Auto Correct will try to bring the artifact back to the expected state. If the operation is successful, the artifact will come back to the Expected State within the next monitoring service cycle (60 seconds).

In the case of "At least One Active" when both host instances are stopped, the system tries to start the first host instance first; if that doesn't work, it tries to start the second host instance. If the operation is successful, the artifact will come back to the Expected State within the next monitoring service cycle (60 seconds). If not, the retry will happen in every next cycle based on the Auto-Correct configuration.

Assuming you are still on the Host Instances screen, follow the below steps to setup Auto Correct for Host instances:

1. Select the check box of the Host Instances(s) for which you want to set up Auto Correct.
2. Select the Auto Correct drop-down and select 'Stopped'.
3. Auto Correct will be enabled for the host instance(s) with the default values for Max Retry as 5 and Retry Count as 0.

Dashboards and Notifications

Once the host instances are mapped for monitoring, the health status of it will be shown in dashboard in a graphical tree view.  If the host instance mapped is violated, it will be listed in the errors and warnings along with the associated alarms. You can also navigate to the respective host instance on clicking them.

In order to receive email notifications from BizTalk360 on the threshold violation alerts (and auto-correction alerts), you need to configure the SMTP settings under BizTalk360 Settings. Follow the steps in this article to be able to configure the SMTP settings in BizTalk360. You will receive an email notification with the exact details of the status of the host instances.