Biztalk Message restore

Question

Requirement: Updating BizTalk application to a new version

Problem: The MSI import does not go through if there are running/suspended instances. Termination would result in loss of messages

What did I try:

I had about 100+ messages in messagebox some active, some with suspended resumable status. I took the back up of BizTalkMsgBoxDb, I then terminated all instances from BTAdmin console and then restored the BizTalkMsgBoxDb.

I was expecting the messages to be back in BizTalkMsgBoxDb but when I queried from BiztalkAdmin console I don't find any of the message back.

Did I miss anything?

Answer 1

if your changes do not contain any changes to ports etc. try and replace the assemblies in GAC and then restart your host instances.

Answer 2

Doing a backup of just one of the BizTalk databases and restoring it is a very dangerous practice and I would strongly advise against it as it can cause some very nasty side effects.

The normal process of a deployment would be to switch of the receive locations and allow any running processes to finish and to resume or terminate any messages/orchestrations as appropriate. Once there were no longer any suspended and running processes/messages would you unenlist all the Orchestrations and do the deployment.

If there are some long running processes that cannot be completed or terminated inside the deployment window then you would have to look at doing a side-by-side deployment. That involves changing the version number of all the DLLs, deploying this and then switching of the receive locations of the old version and switching on the new one. When the old version has finished you stop that and un-deploy it.