Background [back to top]
Biztalk has been in service for several years.
Many problems have
been resolved by the Biztalk Product group and CSS Engineers with SQL and WMI
scripts. Terminator was created to
accomplish 5 primary objectives:
·
A centralized repository for these scripts
·
A way for users to easily execute these scripts
·
A mechanism to auto-update these scripts
·
MBV Integration which allows users to easily resolve common BizTalk
database integrity issues identified by the BizTalk MessageBoxViewer tool (http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/pages/msgboxviewer.aspx).
·
An automated way to improve performance on a Biztalk Group by
tuning with standard tunings that are known to improve Biztalk Performance.
Minimum
Permissions required to run the Terminator [back to top]
· The user running the terminator should be a member of the Biztalk Server Administrators Group.
·
Remote Registry rights to all BTS Servers in the
group (According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314837,
the minimum rights to read remote registry is based on the security rights to
the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurePipeServers\winreg
key. Whoever has rights to this key can access the box’s registry
remotely.)
· SQL SysAdmin permission required for some tasks
· In order to have appropriate permissions on a Windows 2008, Vista, or 7 machine with User Account Control Enabled, the user must right-click and choose “Run as Administrator” when launching Terminator. If using Click-Once deployment to launch Terminator directly from the web, Internet Explorer needs to be Run As Administrator.
Things that you should do before running this tool [back to top]
·
Back up your BizTalk databases
·
Stop all hosts instances (including isolated hosts)
· Stop all BizTalk SQL Agent jobs
· Fully understand the task that you will run before executing it
· Install PowerShell 2.0 on the machine running the tool.
GUI
Overview [back to top]
Terminator is a winforms application. When the application loads, the administrator will be faced with the following window. The admin should input the name of the database server, and check the checkboxes indicating that the below, then hit connect.
After connection the form will display a default view with 4 tabs.
The user should then choose one of the 4 types of scripts by selecting View, Performance, Manage, or Delete on the lower portion of the form.
Biztalk Information
The Biztalk Information tab can be reviewed to verify that you are connecting to the correct group before
Executing a task.
If the user chooses Manage and then Resume Instances description of the task is displayed.
The task type is specified, in this case it is WMI
The Versions of Biztalk that the script supports are displayed. Incidentally, the script will only be shown to the
user if the biztalk group that is connected to is a version that the script supports.
There are a few scripts that cannot be run on multiple messagebox environments. If the script is one of these
It will be specified on the Multi-MessageboxSupport line
The Input parameters are documented here and the Output is also documented.
Clicking the parameters tab
displays the input params.
In this case there is a multi select for ServiceClass where the user chooses the service classes of the instances to be resumed
After all Input Parameters have been chosen, the user Executes the task. The Terminator displays
each option selected and gives the user an option to proceed or not.
The results of the operation are displayed on the Results tab.
MBV Integration
Terminator works closely with MsgBoxViewer (MBV). When MBV finds a known issue which has a Terminator task that will resolve the problem, it creates a file called “MBVCleanupScripts.xml” in the MBV install directory. This file contains the information that Terminator requires to know which script to run.
Terminator can run the SQL & WMI tabs in two modes: MBV mode and Normal mode. Use the Import MBV button on the main form to change into MBV mode and the Normal button to come back out of MBV mode. The tab name will change to signify when in MBV mode. Both modes can be used to resolve issues identified by MBV:
1. MBV
Integration (MBV mode) – With a minimum of MBV version 10.13, MBV will output
MBVCleanupScripts.xml which Terminator can consume to automatically provide the
user with a list of Tasks that can be used to resolve identified issues. Not all issues identified by MBV and
addressable with Terminator are supported by MBV integration.
2. Manual Task Selection
(Normal mode) – The user can look at the MBV html output and manually select
the appropriate tasks in Terminator
For
detailed documentation on the MBV integration feature, please refer to http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkcpr/pages/using-biztalk-terminator-to-resolve-issues-identified-by-biztalk-msgboxviewer.aspx
The
following table provides a summary of all the common database integrity issues
identified by MBV and the associated task in Terminator that can be used to
resolve or view the issue. Note that
some issues require manual integration and some do not have any integration
options and will require troubleshooting by Microsoft Support.
|
Issue
Identified by MBV |
Resolution
Options |
Terminator
Resolution Task |
Terminator
View Task |
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
Message Refs
w/out Spool rows |
None |
No cleanup task
– contact MS support. |
No view task –
contact MS support. |
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
Subscriptions
w/out Instances |
None |
No cleanup task
– contact MS support. |
No view task –
contact MS support. |
|
InstanceState w/out
Instances |
None |
No cleanup task
– contact MS support. |
No view task –
contact MS support. |
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |
|||
|
Manual Task
Selection Only |
Manage Button
> Resume Instances or Terminate Instances and select Host, Class, and Status
as appropriate. |
View Button >
Count Instances (and Save Messages) |
|
|
MBV Integration
or Manual Task Selection |