Send Ports

Send Ports in the BizTalk server is used for transmitting messages to the connected applications. To avoid downtime when sending messages to external systems, it is important to make sure the Send Ports are healthy and running in their expected state. Therefore, BizTalk360 assists BizTalk administrators by monitoring Send Ports against their expected states.

For instance, you want to monitor a Send Port and want to be alerted when its status is not Started. You can easily set up monitoring for this, by setting the Expected State of the Send Port to Started. By doing this, the system will trigger an alert as soon as the Send Port's status does not equal Started.

BizTalk360 allows you to set up monitoring for any desired state, which is not necessarily just the Started state.  In this section, we will see how to set up monitoring on the application's Send Ports. So, when you are configuring monitoring for Send Ports, you can select one of the Expected States from the drop down. The meaning of the states is: 

• Started – The Send Port is expected to be in a started state.
• Stopped – The Send Port is expected to be in a stopped state. 
• Unenlisted – The Send Port is expected to be in an unenlisted state. 
• Do not monitor – Selecting this option will disable monitoring for the selected Send Port
• Unmapped - This means that no monitoring has yet been set up for the selected Send Port

Setting Up Alerts for Send Ports

1. Log in to the BizTalk360 application.
2. Navigate to Monitoring -> Manage Mapping -> Applications in the selected environment.
3. Select the Application for which you want to set up the monitoring
4. Select the Alarm name (see Creating an alarm) from the drop-down for which you would like to associate the alerts.
5. Choose the Send Ports that you wish to monitor.
6. Select the check box against the send ports you wanted to monitor.
7. Set the value of the 'Expected State' by selecting the value from the drop-down. For instance, if the current state of the send port is 'Started' and you want to be alerted when it is 'Stopped', you need to set the value in the drop-down to 'Stopped.'
8. If the current state of the mapped artifacts matches the expected state, the monitor status will be set as Healthy. Conversely, if there is a contradiction between the expected and current states, the monitor status will be set as Critical. If the mapped artifacts 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.

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 heal the artifact any time when there is a mismatch between the Expected State and Current State. For instance, administrators can set up monitoring on the Send Port(s) of an application and additionally set up the auto correct functionality for the Expected State of the artifact (which should be Started).

Whenever the send port goes gets stopped or Un enlisted, 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).

Assuming you are still on the Send Ports screen, follow the below steps to setup Auto Correct for Send Ports:

1. Select the check box of the Send Port for which you want to set up Auto Correct
2. Click Auto Correct drop-down and select 'Enable.'
3. Auto Correct will be enabled for the Send Port with the default values for Max Retry as 5 and Retry Count as 0. 

From the Inventory_Alarm, Send Ports of "Application_MSMQ" need to be monitored. The Send Port need to be in the Started state. Also, Auto Correct needs to be Enabled.

When a Send Port goes down,

Attempt 1 - Auto correct will attempt to bring the send port to the expected state for the first time during the monitoring cycle. (Max Retry: 5, Attempt Count: 1). Let's assume the attempt was unsuccessful. You will receive an Auto Correction Alert email with the information. At this point, the monitoring dashboard will display the state of the artifact as Critical (2). When you click on the count, you will notice the auto correction steps that have been performed on the artifact.

Attempt 2 - Auto correct will attempt a retry for the second time during the next monitoring cycle (Max Retry: 5, Attempt Count: 2). Let's again assume the attempt was unsuccessful. You will receive the second auto correction email with the information.

Attempt 3 - Auto correct will attempt a retry for the third time during the next monitoring cycle (Max Retry: 5, Attempt Count: 3). Let's assume this attempt was successful. You will receive the third auto correction email with the information. Within the next few seconds, the monitoring dashboard will display the state of the artifact as healthy. Lastly, the attempt count will reset to 0 (Max Retry: 5, Attempt Count: 0)

Remove Orphaned Send Ports

When the mapped Send ports was deleted from the BizTalk admin console or renamed, then that artifact is marked as orphaned. The monitor state of these orphaned artifacts is set as Warning. These orphaned artifacts can be removed right from the user interface by clicking the 'Remove Orphaned' button.