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Checklist: Providing High Availability with Fault Tolerance or Load Balancing

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This topic lists steps that you should complete to configure fault tolerance and/or load balancing for the components of a production BizTalk Server environment to provide high availability. Configuration of fault tolerance for these components will allow the system to continue operating if a particular component fails.

Steps Reference
Create multiple BizTalk host instances and implement host clustering support for those adapters that require it. High Availability for BizTalk Hosts
Configure tracking hosts for high availability. High Availability for BizTalk Hosts
Configure the BizTalk Server databases on a clustered SQL Server instance on a Windows server cluster. High Availability for Databases
Configure tracking hosts for high availability. Verify that there are at least N+1 host instances with tracking enabled where N is the number of MessageBox databases in the BizTalk group. To enable tracking for a host, select the option to Allow Host Tracking on the Host Properties dialog box available from the BizTalk Server Administration console. For more information about setting host properties, see the topic Update Host Properties.
Practice database failover regularly to ensure failover functionality. This responsibility should be directly assigned to ensure that this is done on a consistent basis.
Verify there is enough processing power and memory on the passive cluster nodes to enable multiple SQL Server instances to run simultaneously in failover scenarios. If two SQL instances regularly consume over 50 percent of the resources on individual cluster nodes, then when both instances fail over to a single node, each instance will incur degraded performance. Therefore, testing should be performed to ensure that a single cluster node will be able to handle the load until the failed node is brought back online. If a single node cannot handle the load of both SQL instances then consider adding additional cluster nodes to implement an Active/Active/Passive cluster topology.
Implement a storage area network (SAN) to house the BizTalk Server databases. Note: If possible, configure the SAN disks using RAID 1+0 (a stripe of mirror sets) topology for maximum performance and high availability. For more information, see BizTalk Server Database Optimization.
Use Windows Clustering to cluster the Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) master secret server. High Availability for the Master Secret Server Note: Don't cluster the SSO service on a computer running BizTalk Server unless you cluster SSO and a BizTalk host in the same cluster group. For more information about clustering the SSO service and a BizTalk Server host in the same cluster group, see Cluster SSO and a BizTalk Host in the Same Cluster Group.
Back up the Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) Master Secret. See How to Back Up the Master Secret.
Configure the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server for isolated host instances and the BAM Portal Web page to be highly available using Network Load Balancing (NLB) or other load balancing device. For Windows Server 2008: See Network Load Balancing Deployment Guide.

See Also

Providing High Availability