Passed BizTalk 2006 R2 exam (70-241)

I know I am late (probably will be the last) in taking BizTalk 2006 R2 (70-241) exam (Released in October 2009) and will be now retired on June 30 2011 with BizTalk 2006 (70-235) which I passed in June 2008. So I am heads up with BizTalk 2010 (70-595) exam which just released on March 30 2011 and will be taking it next week. Hope to pass that too!

So my passion for BizTalk compelled me to register for BizTalk 2006 R2 exam with BizTalk 2010. Even though it is retiring it was worth taking BizTalk R2 because no one is perfect and I was able to discover my weakness in BizTalk extended capabilities (RFID, AS2, EDI). So when preparing for BizTalk 2010 I am focusing on EDI and RFID which also helped me in BizTalk 2006 R2 exam.

MSDTC errors when BizTalk Cluster is destroyed

I was working on clustering BizTalk servers in UAT, the MSDTC service was clustered as resource, ENTSSO with BizTalk host instances. I had to later on to destroy the clusters and make a new cluster with different UAT machines. I had removed the resources (MSDTC, ENTSSO), deleted clustered host instances and then evicted the machines and then destroyed the cluster. I was sure everything is cleaned up. One more thing had to be done was to remove the DNS entry from the domain of the cluster.

After that I had to configure single server configuration on the destroyed cluster node. One of the Node had no issues and BizTalk was configured correctly on the other machine I was having MSDTC errors which are quite common and a lot of KB, blog posts and forum topics can be found.

First I tried to remove MSDTC by removing registry entries and then uninstalling and installing the MSDTC. By this I was able to see all the tabs instead of two in the Component Services console. Before I could see only two tabs but after deleting the keys and re-installing MSDTC I could see all the tabs (General, Options, Default Properties, Default protocols, COM Security, MSDTC). When component services management console is opened by the (dcomcnfg), I was getting the same errors by accessing the Default Protocols and MSDTC tab. Also noticed that My computer (icon was red). When I tried to open Default Properties tab I was getting the error below.

MSDTC Service
—————————
There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper.

When I tried to open the MSDTC tab I got the error below and it was still showing MSDTC as a clustered resource.

—————————
Catalog Error
—————————
An error occurred while processing the last operation.

Error code 8004E00F – COM+ was unable to talk to the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator.

When I went to the server manager I wanted to remove the Failover Cluster Manager feature and I got the error below.

[Window Title]
Remove Features Wizard

[Main Instruction]
Cannot remove Failover Clustering

[Content]
This server is an active node in a failover cluster.  Uninstalling the Failover Clustering feature on this node may impact the availability of clustered services and applications.  It is recommended that you first evict the server from cluster membership.  This can be done through the Failover Cluster Management snap-in by expanding the console tree under Nodes, selecting the node, clicking More Actions, and then clicking Evict.

It is evident that the eviction of the node, removal of the resources and destruction of the clustered was not done cleanly. I didn’t miss anything I guess as the other node was fine after removing the DNS entry from the domain. I found Symon Perriman’s post mentioning that all the nodes has to be online before evicting the nodes and destroying the cluster.

Well thanks to powershell we can force the node to be removed from the cluster. 

cluster.exe node –NodeName /force

 

MSDTC is healthy again and I am able to configure BizTalk on this node. Lesson learnt!

Orchestration not visible in BizTalk Application

I was working on the Dev-Lab02C in BTS2010Labs. I have been using WCF-SQL adapter since BTS 2006 R2, I don’t know the exact reason why I am doing this Lab but for the sake of completion and keep me self satisfied that I don’t miss anything in BTS 2010 before the exam. I want to go through all of the labs, tutorials, documentation and videos available (won’t do that practically) .

Every BizTalk/.NET developer would be familiar with the Build Action property of each item in VS. With the BizTalk project the artifacts has two options BTSCompile and None (which are self explanatory). In order to use the WCF SQL adapter metadata has to be generated as I did for this lab.

I renamed the orchestration file and type as it was mentioned in the lab, I didn’t notice the Build Action property. I deployed the projects the orchestration was not appearing in the application. I deleted the application two times, verified the assembly was in the GAC, I checked the resources of the application it had the assembly as a resource so where was the orchestration?

I checked the type of the orchestration, Type modifier everything was fine. I saw the orchestration property it was set to Content. This is the first time I have seen this, I thought something new in BTS2010, I clicked the dropdown and there were only two “usual” options without Content. I tried to reproduce this again and again, now I regret that I would have taken a screenshot before changing it.

Well after changing it to BTSCompile I could see the orchestration in the application. Did anyone of you faced the same issue?