Monitoring BizTalk can be done using SCOM or HP OpenView by administrators and issues can be diagnosed and resolved using BizTalk administration console with or without combination of other tools (BizTalk Server 2010 - Tools). To use SCOM solely for BizTalk monitoring might be too costly for mid-sized organization or even an enterprise. The product requires highly skilled people to implement and operate SCOM, and it has a steep learning curve. Besides the skillset it also requires an investments in fair amount of hard- and software. Since SCOM can monitor any Microsoft product, Azure and third-party products it would be waste of resources to just use SCOM for monitoring BizTalk. SCOM be a perfect combination with some tools listed in this article and/or HP OpenView.
BizTalk Processing Monitor (or BPM) tool enables you to monitor message flow through your BizTalk systems. Most monitoring software mentioned in this article monitor for example the availability of endpoints. Important to know if your endpoints are up-and-running, yet this does not guarantee that messages actually are flowing through your system. BPM provides that insight and in case of any interruptions, the user will got notified. Tool is currently in its public beta.
AIMS is a platform technology which monitors and analyzes traffic that flows through a multi-system bus and presents it graphically. The solution provides monitoring and alerting, web-interface, a topological map and trend analysis. The drill down capabilities enable the user to focus on specific applications or components, processes or problem areas. Color-coding of the nodes and edges enables the user to quickly check and verify the status of the BizTalk server and integrations. The alerts are based on trends: AIMS for BizTalk Server will alert the users if the trends shows signs of values outside calculated normal deviations. For instance, a given process shows signs of increasing traffic over a period of time, thus posing a threat in regard to load on the server in the future if this trend continues. AIMS for BizTalk Server will, without setting any thresholds, alert the users that there is a possible threat, based on analysis of historical data for the process and the calculated trend.
Nagios is an open source computer system monitoring, network monitoring and infrastructure monitoring software application, which is based on Linux. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications, and services. It alerts the users when things go wrong and alerts them a second time when the problem has been resolved. The following BizTalk artifacts can be monitored with a plugin, which is developed by op5:
In addition to this it's also possible to monitor BizTalk related metrics and performance counters. More information can be found at the following resources:
SCOM and HP OpenView both offer end-to-end monitoring of your entire enterprise IT infrastructure and its applications and are part of a suite of products. Focus of both products are enterprise wide and for some organizations too costly to implement when it comes down to solely monitoring BizTalk Server. SCOM and HP OpenView can be a good combination, where one can benefit from BizTalk Management Pack. When organizations do not have either of these in place and desire to have a monitoring solution in place they can opt for one of the alternative tools, which all offer a web-interface, support latest BizTalk versions and some offer a broad set of extra features. These tools also can be combined with SCOM/HP OpenView as they complement them. There are quite a few options when it comes down to implement a monitoring solution and it is worth exploring each option and look at offers of all products and tools. In case it comes down to comparing products or combining them that review resources in this article can be worthwhile your time.
Read suggested related topics:
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 15. Comment: Add text to introduction
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 14. Comment: Added BCC Topic including links
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 13. Comment: Added Topic BCC
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 12. Comment: Added Frends Helium Topic
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 11. Comment: Formatting BizTalk 360 Heading
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 10. Comment: TOC problems
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 9. Comment: TOC Formatting
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 8. Comment: Formatting
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 7. Comment: Formatting
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 5. Comment: Formtatting
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 4. Comment: Added Topic IPM including resources
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 3. Comment: Added BizTalk360 Topic
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 2. Comment: Formatting, editing
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Revision 1. Comment: Added new topics
Steef-Jan Wiggers edited Original. Comment: Added SCOM topic