BizTalk Server: Performance Testing

This article is created based on Microsoft documentation and user-experience, all images are Microsoft properties, see reference for more information.

Introduction

Performance testing of an environment is not the same for all companies, the guidelines to perform a good stress test of the environment is important you need to be aware of the difference affects that will occur in the environment your setting up, adapters, throughput etc. what will the environment be used for, this article will go through all the steps to perform a good performance test.

Performance Criteria

In order to perform a good and valued performance test you need to set the criteria of which you want or test your environment. The criteria will contain information about the goal and the purpose of this test, what you need to sustain, what volumes you need to handle, size of messages etc.

Throughput

What will the throughput be in your environment, recommendation is to have a close to realistic amount to what you will have in the running environment. When performing the test you should always push BizTalk to perform at least a 25% above the known throughput. There are also a few things to take into consideration when it comes to figuring out the throughput,

Message format

What kind of message formats, will go through your environment. Know that all different formats will be translated into XML when it arrives at BizTalk, you might have flatfiles, HL7, EDI and regular XML files.

Message size

What will the message size be of your messages, will they differ and how will they be processed by BizTalk, what is the maximum size, and the minimum size of messages coming into BizTalk?

Orchestration requirements

What will the requirements for orchestration be, how complex will they be and what sort of processing will they perform to your environment. Orchestration by require a lot of overhead and resources and the complexity of the orchestration in your environment must be taken into consideration when performing a stress test to your environment.

Adapter requirements

Some adapters are only supported to run on one receive host at the time, which can apply a slower performance if you will have high volume for this adapter. The different adapter have varying performance capabilities. Adapters that require MSDTC will require addition overhead and reduce some performance compared to adapter not using MSDTC transaction.

Peak load

What will be the peak load of your environment, try and define the peaks based on all types of application and processing messages in BizTalk. Processing of messages may require more resources and decrease performance if its not measured and figured out correctly during installation and setup of the environment. It is recommended to go through the articles Measuring Maximum Sustainable Engine Throughput and Measuring Maximum Sustainable Tracking Throughput