Hi all, 

Currently two of our customers are required to set up highly available BizTalk Server 2013 environments on Windows 2012. Scale out is also an important requirement. In both situations the customer has issues getting failover clustering services implemented because of lack of clustering support on Windows 2012 in combination with their virtualization platform configuration. 

For HA scenarios, all Microsoft BizTalk documentation requires Failover clustering at multiple levels (SQL, SSO and BizTalk Receive Hosts for FTP, SQL, SAP adapters etc.). Does anyone know any solutions for creating a BizTalk HA environment without the use of MS failover clustering? 

FYI: BizTalk 2013 does not support Always On. 

Thanks in advance,

Erik

would you elaborate on "...lack of clustering support on Windows 2012..."?

In the Microsoft space what cannot be load balanced, has to be clustered... clustering is not scalability, only HA.. whereas components such as IIS benefit from NLB because of scalability...

Virtualization also in Microsoft (Hyper-V) requires clustering... VMWare ESX however utilizes hyperVisor and some proprietary stuff for that.

Regards.

Hi Shankychei,

thanks for responding. Ok in one scenario the customer uses VMWare vSphere 5.1 which does not support MS clustering services on Windows 2012. vSphere 5.5 does. Unfortunately VMWare cannot be upgraded due to other dependencies,

Clustering on BizTalk hostlevel does enable scaling out BizTalk servers (allthough the clustered hostproecess do not scale)

Regards,

• Edited by Erik2000 22 hours 47 minutes ago

Ah, ok.  Yes, Windows Server 2012 of course supports clustering.

There's a few parts to this.

BizTalk can provide HA and Scale-out by using multiple host computers (or VMs) and creating additional Host Instances on these computers.  This does not require Windows Clustering.

The only instance where BizTalk has a dependence on, and should even use, Windows Clustering is to provide HA for some specific Adapters whose protocol do not have any built-in concurrency management, such as WMQ, MSMQ, FTP and POP3.

At the database level, Windows Clustering is the only supported way provide HA for SQL Server.

However, depending on the application, you can provide HA and Scale-out by running multiple yet completely independent BizTalk environments, including SQL Server.  This would really only work if the application has essentially no 'state' to maintain and any transaction/process can be replayed from the beginning without consequence.

Hmmm... I had a quick look at http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1037959

and found

Quote -

Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering only.In vSphere 5.1 Update 2, a two-node cluster using FCoE with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012 is supported

AND

In vSphere 5.1 Update 2, up to five node cluster with FibreChannel is support with Windows Server 2012.

End-Quote

If there are other H/W dependencies then I'm sure the buisness need for having HA would provide the required investment .

So you should be able to establish the HA by clustering the SQL or if it is a single server then a single TWO node cluster (which in my reading is supported) would suffice for your HA needs. Scalability however, would require the separation between the BizTalk Front-end and the SQL layers. You may still selectively cluster the host instances (receive locations) on the BizTalk FE and if you use external load balancer, you'd be able to scale IIS too...

Regards.

thanks for the responses...

We reviewed the VMWare knowledgebase article as well. Unfortunately the tabel notes your refer to in your quotes do not apply to all cells in the matrix, as a VMWare support engineer stated  that Failover clustering in Windows 2012 is not supported if we are using VMWare with virtual disks or RDM's in ESXi 5.1.

So what are the alternatives to create a HA environment without clustering?

You may be out of options in that case.

IMHO clustering/NLB in a Windows Environment form the basis for any HA and more importantly for your BizTalk Environment to be supported.

So in the absence of HA is the business loss lower as compared to the price of a FibreChannel Controller + Hub + Storage? If yes then you did not need HA (what this implies is that with the Virtual Disks backed up, the H/W outage of the physical servers is non-existent or the time within which the problem is rectified is not large enough for the business to be impacted). If no, then push for the H/W required to support HA.

Regards.

PS: Why don;t you open a support case directly with EMC + Microsoft and see what options they're willing to provide you.

• Edited by ShankycheilMicrosoft community contributor 19 hours 54 minutes ago PS

Hi Shankychei,

thanks for responding. Ok in one scenario the customer uses VMWare vSphere 5.1 which does not support MS clustering services on Windows 2012. vSphere 5.5 does. Unfortunately VMWare cannot be upgraded due to other dependencies,

Clustering on BizTalk hostlevel does enable scaling out BizTalk servers (allthough the clustered hostproecess do not scale)

Regards,

• Edited by Erik2000 Thursday, February 06, 2014 12:39 PM

Hi Shankychei,

thanks for responding. Ok in one scenario the customer uses VMWare vSphere 5.1 which does not support MS clustering services on Windows 2012. vSphere 5.5 does. Unfortunately VMWare cannot be upgraded due to other dependencies,

Clustering on BizTalk hostlevel does enable scaling out BizTalk servers (allthough the clustered hostproecess do not scale)

Regards,

• Edited by Erik2000 Thursday, February 06, 2014 12:39 PM

You may be out of options in that case.

IMHO clustering/NLB in a Windows Environment form the basis for any HA and more importantly for your BizTalk Environment to be supported.

So in the absence of HA is the business loss lower as compared to the price of a FibreChannel Controller + Hub + Storage? If yes then you did not need HA (what this implies is that with the Virtual Disks backed up, the H/W outage of the physical servers is non-existent or the time within which the problem is rectified is not large enough for the business to be impacted). If no, then push for the H/W required to support HA.

Regards.

PS: Why don;t you open a support case directly with EMC + Microsoft and see what options they're willing to provide you.

• Edited by ShankycheilMicrosoft community contributor Thursday, February 06, 2014 3:32 PM PS

You may be out of options in that case.

IMHO clustering/NLB in a Windows Environment form the basis for any HA and more importantly for your BizTalk Environment to be supported.

So in the absence of HA is the business loss lower as compared to the price of a FibreChannel Controller + Hub + Storage? If yes then you did not need HA (what this implies is that with the Virtual Disks backed up, the H/W outage of the physical servers is non-existent or the time within which the problem is rectified is not large enough for the business to be impacted). If no, then push for the H/W required to support HA.

Regards.

PS: Why don;t you open a support case directly with EMC + Microsoft and see what options they're willing to provide you.

• Edited by ShankycheilMicrosoft community contributor Thursday, February 06, 2014 3:32 PM PS

I'm confused.  As has been mentioned - HA does not mean scale out.  Scaling out BizTalk at the application level does not require any clustering at all - you may want it, but you don't need it.  SQL is the tier that requires clustering and that's pretty well covered. 

-Dan

Thanks Dan, but that's not true, if on want to scale out (or use at least two hosts for HA), by adding hosts with equal host instances you need to cluster for some receive handlers, please read: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561801(v=bts.80).aspx

Only FTP and MSMQ and you're not scaling out then.  Cluster means Active-Passive.  Scale out means Active-Active. 

If you want a poor man's cluster you can have both host instances configured to run FTP or whatever adapter, and then disable one of them.  The script can then flip which one is disabled.  I wouldn't do that though.

-Dan