BizTalk Server 2006 on Vista

In this post, I will mention how could I install, configure, administer, and run BizTalk Server 2006 on Vista, I just installed vista 3 times before, and I really like to upgrade, but at the same time I want to use the new operating system to the max by migrating all my development work and applications to the new cutting-edge Vista.

I installed Vista Ultimate, and then I updated it, then restarted the machine, ah !, my machine is 1.83 GHZ, core duo, 1 GB RAM, however first thing I did was to disable UAC, User Access Control, simply speaking UAC is a new feature in Vista, that limits application rights, and this reminds me of CAS in .NET, or Code Access Security, so UAC will alert you every time one application tries to do one administrative action, so if you have any virus or malware on your system that's trying to do some malicious actions, UAC will show a modal window that is asking for your permission to run this application, and frankly it's a very annoying feature, esp. for developers and administrators, and some applications will act inconsistently when UAC is working behind the scenes, so it's better disable it, at least for me, to get more information about the UAC , for more information about UAC refer to this guide.

You can disable UAC in so many ways, you can do it through UI, or command line, and I preferred to do it via UI, I did the following to disable UI:

1. Press CTRL+R, type msconfig
2. System configuration will launch, go to Tools tab.
3. Select "Disable UAC"
4. Reboot the machine.

After you reboot you will get a red icon in the toolbar, and this is the security warning that you will get every time when you start your system, right click it and select exit.

Then, I started to install SQL Server 2005, and as you may know that you cannot run BizTalk on SQL Server Express Edition, I like to run Developer edition, as this is a development machine, and it would be better to run developer edition, I launched installation, and the wizard went through the checklist peacefully,but there was one warning about IIS, the installation wizard was not able to detect IIS 7, however after some searching, I got to know how to fix this issue, I needed to add some IIS feature that are not installed by default when you install Vista, to get around this check this Microsoft article, after checking the full list and added all required components, I restarted SQL server installation wizard and it installed successfully, also one more interesting thing, SQL Server 2005 is not installing the sample Adventure Works databases, by default so you have to select custom installation and select them, after finishing installation I opened the AdventureWorks, ran some queries, everything was fine.

Next step, was to install Visual Studio.NET 2005, I opted to install the Team Suite Edition (TS), because I like to have all the features installed, however while installing both SQL server and VS.NET I got one window more than once, warning about a well known compatibility issue of VS.NET 2005 with Vista, I simply selected to resume, if you want to get the full list of issues for VS.NET 2005 with Vista, refer to this article on Microsoft, after installing VS.NET I created one windows application and it ran well, also I created a test web application and also it ran successfully, then I proceeded to the next step that's installing BizTalk.

I launched the BizTalk Server 2006 installation wizard, and selected to download the cab file that contains all required components to run BizTalk, it launched Microsoft Downloads website in an external IE window, and it was pointing to the cab file for Windows Server 2003, I downloaded the cab file, and then restarted installation and gave path to the cab file I downloaded before, installation completed successfully, and that was great for me, then I finished installation and checked to launch the configuration wizard, I selected Basic Configuration, the configuration went well, but i took so long time more than expected, it took about 10-15 minutes, maybe more than this, however after successful configuration I opened one simple BizTalk application that I had build before, it simply contains 2 schemas, one map, and one orchestration that writes a message to 2 different file locations based on one conditional decide, I rebuilt the 2 projects, first messaging one, then orchestration project, then I set deployment options to deploy to my local server, I deployed assemblies successfully, and then launched the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console, to create physical send and receive ports and bind them to the orchestration, first I started with creating the receive location, but after filling all required fields and pressing OK, I got the following error : " Could not store transport type data for Receive Location 'rcvLocEmployee' to config store. Primary SSO Server '{MachineName}' failed. Could not contact the SSO server '{MachineName}'. Check that SSO is configured and that the SSO service is running on that server".

I wanted to check the SSO service from Services console, hit CTRL+R, typed Services.msc, launched Services console, I checked the "Enterprise Single Sign-On Service", and the status was "Starting", I right clicked the service and stopped it, then started it, it started well, then I recreated the receive port, and this time it passed , and then I created a couple of send ports, and it passed as well, then I started the BizTalk Application 1, it started successfully this time, because before I restart SSO service I tried to start it but it didn't.

I enabled the receive location and enlisted and started the 2 send ports I just created, everything ran quite well, then I bound the physical ports to my orchestration and it got bound successfully, I started to test my simply application by copying an XML message to the receive location, after a while it disappeared as expected and got copied to the destination folders, as per my orchestration logic, I tested another message and it was working greatly, and finally I made sure that everything is working fine, I was so happy to do it , as I have searched on Google so many times but couldn't find clear walk through to get BTS 2006 running on Vista, I opened BizTalk Configuration and exported my configuration settings to XML file, so I can consume later in case of any disaster, I checked the BAM site and it was running as well, also I ran some queries in HAT and it ran as expected, my next step is to install Service Packs to fix these compatibility issues.

Happy BizTalking on Vista!