SQL Server

  • Updated on Feb 25, 2025
  • Published on Jul 29, 2024
  • 2 minute(s) read
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Prerequisites: To use the server availability monitoring, either Ping or Telnet must be enabled on the respective server.

BizTalk Server highly depends on its SQL Server databases for storing messages, picking them up for processing, maintaining the state and configuration of all kinds of artifacts, and many other tasks. Therefore, it is crucial that BizTalk Server can access its databases via SQL Server. Especially in Production environments, often Fail-over Clusters or Availability Groups are used for SQL Server high availability. BizTalk360 provides SQL Server Availability monitoring to understand if SQL Server is working like expected.

Configuring SQL Server Availability Monitoring in BizTalk360

To configure SQL Server Availability Monitoring, follow the below steps.

  1. Log in to BizTalk360.

  2. Navigate to the 'Monitoring' section.

  3. Expand the 'Manage Mapping' tab and select 'Server Availability'.

  4. At the top, click on 'BizTalk'. BizTalk360 will then display all the configured BizTalk servers within the current BizTalk group.

  5. Users have to select the Alarm that they would like to associate with BizTalk server availability monitoring and then select the BizTalk Server that they want to monitor from the list and click 'Enable Monitoring' to start monitoring the BizTalk server.

  6. By default, the ICMP protocol and Any one server is down option will be selected. Users can change the protocols based on their business requirements.

Once the settings are configured, BizTalk360 will start monitoring the SQL servers for any violations of the configure monitoring rules. Once a violation occurs, BizTalk360 will notify the users via configured notification channels. To receive email notifications from BizTalk360 on the threshold violation alerts, users must configure the SMTP settings under BizTalk360 Settings. Follow the steps in this article to configure the SMTP settings in BizTalk360.

Important points to remember in SQL Server Availability

Check the below list for a couple of important points concerning SQL Server Availability Monitoring:

  • Choose between ICMP or Telnet protocol - To check the SQL server availability, administrators need to ping the servers. BizTalk360 supports 'Ping' and 'Telnet' to achieve this; therefore, (one of) these protocols need to be enabled 

  • Administrators can choose the option when to receive the alert, either if one of the SQL Servers in the group has gone down or only when all the servers in the group have gone down

  • In BizTalk360, SQL Server availability can be configured for only one alarm per environment

  • When a Gateway Proxy is configured in BizTalk360 (under Settings > Gateway Settings), Telnet would use the proxy details to bypass the Firewall

  • BizTalk360 also gives the option to modify the existing configured Server Availability monitoring at any time

Note:

To use the server availability monitoring, either Ping or Telnet must be enabled on the respective server.


Dashboard and Notifications

Once the SQL servers are enabled for monitoring, the health status of it will be shown in dashboard in a graphical tree view.  If the server enabled is not available, it will be listed in the errors and warnings along with the associated alarms. You can also navigate to the respective SQL server 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 SQL server availability.