Introduction

And most common to ask how can I learn to be a developer in BizTalk than how I can be an administrator? But BizTalk Administrator plays an important role in BizTalk environments.



I would like to begin to highlight two important blogs about this topic:

• BizTalk Administrator Blog by Tord Glad Nordahl
• BizTalkAdminsBlogging.com - Where BizTalk admins meet, an BizTalk Administrator Community created by Jeroen Hendriks

And five important resources:

• List of Service Packs and Cumulative Updates available: This article lists all the available service packs and the cumulative updates for Microsoft BizTalk Server and for Microsoft BizTalk Adapter Pack.
• Summary of operating systems supported by BizTalk Server.
• Summary of SQL Server versions supported by BizTalk Server.
• Summary of 64-bit support for the different versions and editions of BizTalk Server.
• General entry point home page of the Developer Center.

This guide describes a list of essential resources to help you plan start learning How to be a BizTalk Server Administrator.

BizTalk Server Virtual Labs

Microsoft Virtual Labs take you through a series of guided, hands-on labs. Each lab is estimated to be of duration 90 minutes.

BizTalk Server 2010 Virtual Labs

• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Examining a BizTalk Application: After completing this lab, you will be better able to examine the BizTalk solution and test the BizTalk application.
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Monitoring Business Activity: After completing this lab, you will be better able to define a complete BAM observation model (Business Analyst), deploy BAM observation model (IT Professional), map BAM observation model to implementation (Developer), and view KPI’s and create business alerts on them (Business User).
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Deploying and Managing BizTalk Applications: After completing this lab, you will be better able to assign a strong name key to an assembly, configure the application deployment property, build and deploy a BizTalk application, manage ports by using binding files, manage applications by using MSI packages, move resources and ports between applications, and manage applications by using BTSTask.
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Integrating with Adapters: After completing this lab, you will be better able to publish an InfoPath form to a SharePoint Library, configure and test the HTTP receive Adapter, configure and test the FTP Adapter, and configure and test the SharePoint Adapter.
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Routing BizTalk Messages: After completing this lab, you will be better able to add an existing schema and map to the project, promote schema properties, create a Receive Port and a Receive Location, create a Send Port for all orders, create a Send Port for cash Orders, create a Send Port for credit orders, and test the Port configuration.

BizTalk Server 2010 it's build in the technologies found in previous versions, so many of the labs below will help you learn skills that apply also to BizTalk Server 2010.

BizTalk Server 2009 Virtual Labs

• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009: Using the WCF Adapters in BizTalk Server 2009.
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009: Processing EDI messages with BizTalk Server 2009.
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009: Deployment and Management.

VHD Virtual Machine

BizTalk 2010 VHD Virtual Machine

Download this fully configured virtual machine of the latest release of BizTalk Server. Evaluate the new capabilities of BizTalk Server 2010 by completing the BizTalk Server 2010 Training Kit which is preinstalled on this VHD. The BizTalk Server 2010 training kit includes labs and training videos to help you learn about the new features of BizTalk Server 2010.

• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 VHD: This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010. [Release Date: 5/4/2011]
  • System requirement
    • Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2.
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is required to use this virtual machine.
    • In addition to the system requirements for Windows Server 2008 as described in the release notes, a 64-bit system with hardware-assisted virtualization enabled and data execution prevention (DEP) is required.

Administrator Training Kit

Training Kit contains a complete set of materials that will enable you to learn the core capabilities of the technology or role that you will play:

• BizTalk Server 2010 Administrator Training Kit: The BizTalk Administrator Training Kit contains a complete set of materials that will enable you to learn the core administrator capabilities in BizTalk Server 2010. This kit includes lab manuals, PowerPoint presentations and videos, all designed to help you learn about BizTalk Server 2010. [Release Date: 8/21/2011]
• BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Training Kit: This training kit contains a complete set of materials that will enable you to learn about the ESB Toolkit in BizTalk Server 2010. This kit includes lab manuals, PowerPoint presentations and videos, all designed to help you learn about the ESB Toolkit. There is also an option below to download a Virtual Machine that is ready for you to use with the training kit. [Release Date: 8/20/2011]
• Windows PowerShell 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK): Windows PowerShell 2.0 SDK contains sample code and reference assemblies that allow you to build applications based on Windows PowerShell. [Release Date: 12/22/2009]

Tutorials

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Tutorials

• BizTalk Server RFI 2009 Tutorials: The BizTalk RFID tutorials contain detailed steps for implementing simple scenarios to give new users an experience of using a variety of BizTalk RFID tools and APIs while creating compiled, testable solutions.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials

• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Tutorials: The BizTalk Server 2006 administration tutorials are designed for BizTalk Server administrators.
  •  The first tutorial (Tutorial 1: Configuring a Multi-Server Environment) walks you through configuring a typical multi-server, highly available BizTalk Server environment, including a domain controller, a SQL Server failover cluster with two nodes, a BizTalk Server group with two servers, and optionally a Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server (used as a proxy server to connect the tutorial network to WAN).
  •  The second tutorial (Tutorial 2: Performing BizTalk Server Administration Tasks) covers BizTalk Server application deployment, application upgrade, and scaling out BizTalk Server applications to multiple BizTalk Servers. To go through Tutorial 2, you need to download and install the files in BTS06AT_Tutorial2Files.zip.

BizTalk Server Scripts and Resources

Microsoft TechNet Gallery

TechNet Gallery is your destination for finding resources written in VB Script, PowerShell, SQL, JavaScript, or other script languages, or other kind of resources (docs, Visio file and so on) and a great place to find administration scripts. For BizTalk Server you can find over 48 resources.

• BizTalk Server TechNet Gallery Samples.
• BizTalk Server: Administrator Queries and Scripts: This article is dedicated to gather information for all the resources related to scripting for BizTalk administrators. It should include information with a reference to the exact location where you can find and download the script.

Feel free to download, rate them and leave feedback. If you have inspiration to create a sample or have lying around you can upload   your sample easily.

TechNet Wiki

The TechNet Wiki is a technical resource for the community. Anyone who joins the community can contribute new topics, edit and enhance existing topics, provide comments and friend other registered users.

In the last months almost 50 new articles have been written by community members, this is a great place to find high quality information:

• BizTalk Administration Guide: BizTalk administrators play a crucial role in running and maintaining a BizTalk environment. They are responsible to deploy BizTalk environments and applications, monitoring, upgrades, migrations, and all other kinds of administrative tasks like backup/recovery, availability and so on. This article will provide an overview of all useful resources available for BizTalk Administrators.

You can see all the BizTalk Server articles that are available on the TechNet Wiki here: BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki

Others Scripts

• BizTalk Server Restore Script for BizTalk 2006 Standard Edition: This script is to be used for disaster recovery of BizTalk Servers running BizTalk Server 2006 standard edition.  

BizTalk Server Documentation

The BizTalk Server tutorials contain detailed steps for implementing simple scenarios. These tutorials give new users an experience of using a variety of BizTalk tools while creating compiled, testable solutions.

BizTalk Server 2013 Documentation

• Installation Guides Related to BizTalk Server 2013 – Beta: This page provides the installation guides for various products shipped with BizTalk Server 2013 - Beta.

BizTalk Server 2010 Documentation

• BizTalk Server 2010 Documentation: Download the installation documentation for BizTalk Server 2010.
• Microsoft BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 Documentation: Download the documentation for Microsoft BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010.
• BizTalk Server 2010 Management Pack Documentation: Readme and documentation for the BizTalk Server 2010 Management Pack. The Readme provides late breaking information that might not be available within the product documentation. The BizTalk Server 2010 Management Pack Guide includes help content for the BizTalk Server 2010 Management Pack.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 FileAct and InterAct Adapters Documentation: Installation guide and Help for BizTalk Server 2010 FileAct and InterAct adapters.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Performance Optimization Guide: The BizTalk Server 2010 Performance Optimization Guide provides prescriptive guidance on the best practices and techniques that should be followed to optimize BizTalk Server performance.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Operations Guide: Provides detailed information for planning a BizTalk Server environment, as well as recommendations and best practices for configuring, testing, maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing this environment.

BizTalk Server 2009 Documentation

• BizTalk Server 2009 Documentation: Download the installation documentation for BizTalk Server 2009 in two formats: CHM and HXS.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Operations Guide: Provides detailed information for planning a BizTalk Server environment, as well as recommendations and best practices for configuring, testing, maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing this environment.
• Microsoft BizTalk RFID 2009 Installation Guides: Download the installation instructions for BizTalk RFID.
• Microsoft BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 Installation Guide: Download the latest installation instructions for the BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0.
• BizTalk Server Training from Microsoft Customer Service and Support: This set of documents contains training information about BizTalk Server from Microsoft Customer Service and Support.
• BizTalk Server 2009 Hyper-V Guide: This guide provides information for using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

BizTalk Server 2006/2006 R2 Documentation

• BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Documentation: Download the installation documentation for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in two formats: CHM and HxS.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Management Pack is used for monitoring BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk 2006 R2, and Microsoft Enterprise Single Sign-On components.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide: Provides detailed information for planning a BizTalk Server environment, as well as recommendations and best practices for configuring, testing, maintaining, monitoring, and optimizing this environment.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide: This guide provides performance optimization information for BizTalk Server.
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 FileAct and InterAct Adapters for SWIFT Help: Download the documentation for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 FileAct and InterAct Adapters for SWIFT.
• BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide: This guide provides information for using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
• Performance Tuning for BizTalk Server Datasheet: Microsoft Services Performance Tuning for BizTalk Server consulting engagement gives your people the tools, methods, and practices with which to enhance the performance and stability of your BizTalk Server 2004/2006/2006 R2 solution.

BizTalk Webcasts and Video Tutorials

• BizTalk Server 2010 - Throttling and Threshold Slow running application [by Tord Glad Nordahl]
• What is BizTalk Server Throttling?  [by biztalk360]
• BizTalk Assessment and Architecture Review: Making a good BizTalk assessment and architecture review is a not a simple thing. BizTalk Server needs many different technologies in order to run. There are many aspects to be considered and many things to inspect in order to make a complete BizTalk architecture review. Nino Crudele explains with full of fun and humour in this 45 mins talk. [by Nino Crudele] New!
• What's new in BizTalk 2013, Windows 2012, and SQL 2012: For BizTalk Administrators and Developers it’s important to stay ahead of new releases and be aware of what’s happening? BizTalk Server 2013 will be out soon and the new improved features in SQL and windows Server 2012 is important to be aware of. There have been major updates in Fail over clustering, DNS, Group Policy and Hyper-V and Networking. In video Tord will guide you through the updates and features so you are ready to initiate and start using BizTalk Server 2013. [by Tord Glad Nordahl] New!
• Creating a Highly Available BTS 09 Environment: A look at designing and implementing a highly available BizTalk Server 2009 deployment [by Kent Weare]
• Configuring Microsoft BizTalk Server for Performance: Optimizing and verifying your BizTalk Server installation is not an easy thing to do. The documentation is good but very extensive. This presentation aims to guide you through the most important operations needed to boost the performance of BizTalk. The session includes a live demo that shows how these settings are applied and how it significantly improves performance.  [by Mikael Håkansson]
• BizTalk Benchmark Wizard: The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard is a simple tool to validate a BizTalk installation, making sure it performs as could be expected. The purpose of this tool is to verify your BizTalk environment performs as expected. The typical use-case where you would use the BizTalk Benchmark Wizard would be after BizTalk Server is installed and before deploying any solutions to the environment. [by Mikael Håkansson]
• BizTalk Server - Development and Administration Best Practices (2/2): Providing reliable and scalable hosting for BizTalk Server in a production environment can be challenging. This session will address some of the common issues that BizTalk projects face going into production and highlight ways that you can help to ensure the environment runs smoothly and reliably: BizTalk deployment architecture; Planning for installation; Installation best practices; Monitoring best practices; BizTalk Server disaster recovery and Disaster recovery best practices .[by Brian Loesgen and Alan Smith]
• BizTalk 2009 – End to end performance testing (part 1) and (part 2): In this session we will introduce the BizTalk Performance Testing Guidance. This guide contains a fully documented end to end process that you can follow to achieve consistent results in your BizTalk performance testing. In addition to this we have packaged up all of the prescriptive optimizations that have been applied during the Ranger team's labs. Many of these have been automated through PowerShell and SQL Scripts to enable you to quickly and easily attain the optimum performance from your system.  [by Paolo Salvatori]
• BizTalk Server Performance: Configuring BizTalk Server for Performance: Optimizing and verifying your BizTalk Server installation is not an easy thing to do. The documentation is good but very extensive. This presentation aims to guide you through the most important operations you need to do in order to boost the performance of BizTalk. The session includes a live demo that shows how these settings are applied and how it significantly improves the performance. [by Paolo Salvatori and Mikael Håkansson]
• Configuring Microsoft BizTalk Server for Performance: Optimizing and verifying your BizTalk Server installation is not an easy thing to do. The documentation is good but very extensive. This presentation aims to guide you through the most important operations needed to boost the performance of BizTalk. The session includes a live demo that shows how these settings are applied and how it significantly improves performance. [by Mikael Håkansson]
• EDI Tutorial 2: Create Trading Partners and Business Profiles: CreateTradingPartnersandBusinessProfiles – This is the second video of the BizTalk Server 2010 EDI tutorial. In the first video, we reviewed a simple EDI scenario, and prepared for creating a BizTalk Server EDI solution. This video demonstrates how to create trading partners and business profiles. [by Microsoft]
• EDI Tutorial 3: Create Send and Receive Ports: This is the third video of the BizTalk Server 2010 EDI tutorial. In the last video, we created trading partners and business profiles. This video demonstrates how to create receive ports and send ports required for exchanging messages between the trading partners. [by Microsoft]
• EDI Tutorial 4: Create Trading Partner Agreement: This is the fourth video of the BizTalk Server 2010 EDI tutorial. In the last video, we created send and receive ports that are used to transfer messages between trading partners. This video demonstrates how to create a trading partner agreement between two business profiles. [by Microsoft]
• EAI Tutorial 4: Deploy the Solution: This is the fourth video of the BizTalk Server 2010 EAI tutorial. In the last two videos, we created a BizTalk project with two schemas and a map, and another BizTalk project with an orchestration. This video demonstrates how to deploy, configure, and test the solution. [by Microsoft]
• Instrument your BizTalk Server: Optimizing and verifying your BizTalk Server installation is not an easy thing to do. This session guides you through the most important operations you need to do to boost the performance of BizTalk Server. [by  Ewan Fairweather and Mikael Håkansson]
• Performance Optimization Patterns: This session presents architectural, design, and development patterns to improve BizTalk processing performance. "Performance" can be expressed by latency and/or throughput, and this session will cover aspects of both. This will include pipeline and orchestration patterns to increase throughput, reduce latency, and reduce memory usage during BizTalk processing. We will also cover the results of recent performance engagements from the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team (CAT). [by Ewan Fairweather and Mikael Håkansson]
• Settings Dashboard: Managing BizTalk Group Settings: This video demonstrates how you can use BizTalk Settings Dashboard to provide full control of your BizTalk installations. It shows the effects of modifying per-host instance settings, and demonstrates how to import saved group configurations. [by QuickLearn]
• BizTalk Server Management and Monitoring using BizTalk360: In this session, Saravana Kumar Founder of BizTalk360 explains various challenges organizations face today when it comes to BizTalk server day to day operations, administration and monitoring and how BizTalk360 addresses those pain points. [by Saravana Kumar] New!

Books

There a great number of BizTalk books present today mainly for developers and many touching the surface on administration concepts (you can see the list here). But there is still no book available in the market that is focused solely on BizTalk Administration,

Forums and Blogs

BizTalk Blogs and Groups

• BizTalk Administrator Blog by Tord Glad Nordahl.
• BizTalkAdminsBlogging.com - Where BizTalk admins meet, an BizTalk Administrator Community created by Jeroen Hendriks.
• BizTalk Administration and Troubleshooting by Stuart Brierley.

This article is intended to be a knowledge base of all BizTalk blog’s that are available.

• BizTalk: Blogroll.

And Also:

• BizTalk Blogs – Latest news and opinion from BizTalk experts.
• BizTalk Gurus – Community Site focused on Microsoft BizTalk Server, Server and Platform AppFabric and Windows Workflow Foundation.
• BizTalk 24*7 - Community Website for Biztalk Developers/Architects/Adminstrators.

Forums

• BizTalk Server General – General BizTalk Server discussions.
• BizTalk ESB Toolkit – Discussion for the BizTalk ESB Toolkit.
• BizTalk Server Adapters and Adapter Pack – All questions related to LOB Adapters, BizTalk WCF Adapter, WCF LOB Adapter SDK and BizTalk Adapter Pack.
• BizTalk Server EDI and AS2 – All questions related to new EDI and AS2 features of BizTalk Server.
• BizTalk Server RFID – All questions related to new RFID features of BizTalk Server.
• BizTalk Guru – Forums – 7 Forums about BizTalk.
• Forum Biztalk Brasil (PT).
• BizTalk Server (MSDN – PT) – Este fórum tem por objetivo a discussão de questões técnicas relacionadas ao desenvolvimento de soluções de integração de aplicações e orquestração de processos.

Whitepapers

BizTalk Server 2010 Whitepapers

• Supportability and operation of Microsoft BizTalk Server [motion10 White paper]
  
  
  
  Having a stable, robust, and highly available BizTalk Server environment is important. Many times when BizTalk Server is installed and solutions are architected, designed and developed, the environment has not been implemented with supportability and operations in mind. System boundaries are reached fast and solutions do not perform well or make BizTalk throttle, as a result of excessive memory use or flooding of the system with messages, etc. Furthermore, it is often hard to find the root cause of problems arising in production environments. There are many ways to prevent these kind of situations. For example by using the right architecture, design and development approach and by using the available validation and monitoring tools. This, together with applying some of the best practices provided by Microsoft and the effective collaboration between system, network, database and BizTalk administrators with the integration team can greatly help increase supportability of BizTalk Server based integration solutions.[by Steef-Jan Wiggers]
• BizTalk Server Assessment and Architecture Review: This white paper examines the best practices to make a BizTalk assessment and architecture review. This includes how to organize good documentation (for all BizTalk aspects, message flows, transformation, technologies stack, infrastructure, network, adapters, disks, connections, configurations and databases) as well as the correct indicators for the whole BizTalk environment. [by Nino Crudele] New!

BizTalk Server 2006/2006 R2 Whitepapers

• Managing a Successful Performance Lab: This paper outlines some key strategies for managing a successful performance lab with Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006.

PowerShell

• Windows PowerShell Quick Reference: Quick-reference guide to commonly-used Windows PowerShell commands.

Posters

• BizTalk Server 2010 BAM Poster: This poster describes BizTalk Server 2010 BAM concepts, processes, and management for both new and experienced users.
• BizTalk Server 2010 BAM Interactive Poster: This interactive poster created in Silverlight lets you learn selectively and in depth about BizTalk Server 2010 BAM.
• BizTalk Server 2010 Database Infrastructure Poster: This poster describes BizTalk Server 2010 databases and associated components, jobs, services, UI, and events. 
• BizTalk Server 2010 Scale-out Configurations Interactive Poster: This poster describes typical scale-out configurations and options for BizTalk Server 2010.
• BizTalk Server 2010 Capabilities Poster: The poster provides a high-level and detailed view of BizTalk Server 2010 features and capabilities.
• BizTalk Server 2010 Scale-out Configurations Poster: This poster describes typical scale-out configurations and options for BizTalk Server 2010.
• BizTalk Server 2010 Runtime Architecture Poster: The poster depicts message flow, data flow, and references that occur at runtime in BizTalk Server 2010.

Tools

There are a number of tools that can aid you as BizTalk administrator. These tools are not the out of the box tools offered by BizTalk Server like BizTalk Administration Console or BTSTask. Through the internet you can find numerous tools that can help you for instance in automating deployment, analyze your BizTalk environment or identify performance issues. You will find these tools on Operating System, Codeplex or Microsoft Download Center.

• BizTalk Server 2010 - Tools

Managing BizTalk can be done with the out of the box Administration Console, which focuses on BizTalk Group itself, managing applications, adapters, etcetera and for troubleshooting purposes. It is not suitable for monitoring BizTalk, generating alerts and notifications. Commercially and through CodePlex there are products and tools available that can fulfill motoring requirement for an enterprise/organization.

• BizTalk Monitoring Tools

Courses

QuickLearn

QuickLearn Training Inc.  Go beyond the Microsoft curriculum with QuickLearn training. Our trainers will help you master the skills necessary to both administer and develop a robust BizTalk Server environment. Our public classes delivered live from our classrooms in Kirkland Washington allow attendees to participate in person or remotely. Our courses are also offered throughout the world through our terrific partners. If you prefer any of our classes can be delivered to your staff at your venue.

Our classes are updated frequently to reflect the latest versions of and updates to BizTalk Server.

• BizTalk Server 2013 Administration - Provides the skills necessary to install and maintain a robust BizTalk Server environment for Production, QA or testing.  
• BizTalk 2010 Administrator Fundamentals - Self paced course focusing on the basics of BizTalk Administration.

Tord G. Nordahl (Bouvet ASA, Norway) offers:

• BizTalk Administration Deep Dive Training (see more here)

See Also

Read suggested related topics:

• Training Resources for BizTalk Developers
• BizTalk Server 2013 Beginners Guide
• BizTalk Server 2010 Beginners Guide

Another important place to find a huge amount of BizTalk related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki.