Monday, July 02, 2007

BizTalk on VM machines( Virtual Server , Vmware)

Though it is known that BizTalk Server 2006 was supported on Virtual Server 2005 . There was a silence on its support for othe VM's . It is quite hard to get some good documentation on what is Microsoft's stand on other VM's . This KB I recently saw throws more light

As per latest documentation (June 7 , 2007 ) BizTalk 2004 and 2006 is supported on Virtual Server and from a guarded silence on VMWARE now it has been clarified as commercially reasonable support . Which means as long as the issue on the virtual platform does not require a code fix as such, Microsoft would support it .

If the issue is on say VMware, and if it can be reproduced on a non VM box Microsoft would support it. I have heard from fellow MVP's that some customers have already gone and deployed BizTalk solution on VMWare as Vmware was consistent with their overall IT virtualization strategy that included non-ms applications and superior features for eg. Until Virtual Server 2007 ther was not 64 bit support which VMWare already had.

Also there does not seem any case study on customers going live on the BIZTALk + Virtualk Server platform that I have been able to find.

The full text of the KB is reproduced below


SUMMARY

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Server 2004 are fully supported when they are installed on a supported operating system that is running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. Neither BizTalk Server 2006 nor BizTalk Server 2004 may perform as expected if you have installed it on a supported operating system that is running on a virtual machine (VM) other than Virtual Server 2005. BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Server 2004 have not been tested on operating systems that are running on VMs other than Virtual Server 2005.

MORE INFORMATION

Product support for BizTalk Server 2006 and for BizTalk Server 2004 on a VM other than Virtual Server 2005 is provided as commercially reasonable support. Commercially reasonable support is defined as all reasonable support efforts by Microsoft Customer Support Services that do not require BizTalk Server 2006 or BizTalk Server 2004 code fixes.

If you experience a problem in BizTalk Server 2006 or in BizTalk Server 2004 on a VM other than Virtual Server 2005, and the problem cannot be resolved through commercially reasonable support, the problem must be reproducible in a non-VM environment or on Virtual Server 2005 for the problem to be escalated to the BizTalk Server Product group as a bug.

If you are planning a Virtual Biztalk Installtion . Do drop me a line , I am very much interested

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is good news, virtualization is not going away any time soon.

One of the issues I regularly saw when virtualizing Biztalk was the 'one or more services failed to start' message. See my post for how I solved it. http://geekswithblogs.net/BizWhisperer/archive/2006/11/22/97838.aspx

Rob said...

Hey Abhilash interesting information Biztalk and VM stuff. I was just thinking about doing the same thing and started to look into the feasbility. We're a consultantcy in UK and work with biztalk as part of a wider suite of things for clients. I want to set up an evironment with a couple of servers and a Unix box which interact with each other. However we don't really want to buy loads of machines so my thought was to buy the unix box and put the other two (which are intels) on VM's. Our work involves migrating our clients from one environment a component of which is Biztalk 2003 and SQL 2000 to a new environment with Biztalk 2006 and SQL 2007. Is this feasible with Virtual server 2005 which we have.

I'm guessing the first 2003 will be the problem.

any info appreciated

Unknown said...

There is no Biztlk 2003 , Did you mean 2004 ? ,I can't comment on SQL 2007 either .

But with BizTalk 2006 Yes You can use Virtual Server 2005

Anonymous said...

Hi, We've been using VMware and BizTalk for some time now and keep coming across a bit of an issue when configuring. This seems to revolve around security permissions for creating groups. Check out our post on how we solved it BizTalk 2006 on VMWare Workstation, it might save you a few hours head banging!

Binay Khandelwal said...

Hi

We are using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 64 bit on win2k3 (64 bit) running in VMWare.

This seems to be having issues with CPU utilisation going 100% even if there is minimal load on the server.

Any pointer to this issue is really appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Hi Abhilash,
I am installing biztalk server 2009 on Virtual Machine 2007.but in configuration it is getting failed for biztalk runtime,Please help me here.I am using sql server 2008 here