How to set up a BizTalk active/active cluster

Question

I am setting up a virtual environment as a proof of concept with the following architecture:

• 2 node web farm
• 2 node SQL active/passive fail-over cluster
• 2 node BizTalk active/active cluster

The first two are straight forward, now I'm wondering about the BizTalk cluster.

If I followed the same model as setting up SQL (by using the Fail-over cluster manager in windows to create a cluster) I think I would end up with an active/passive cluster.

What makes a BizTalk cluster Active/Active?

Do I need to create a windows cluster first, or do I just install BizTalk on both machines and configure BizTalk appropriately?

Answer 1

Yes, my understanding is that you do need to cluster the OS first.

That said, you can usually avoid the need for clustering unless you need to cluster one of the 'pull' receive handlers like FTP, MSMQ, SAP etc. For everything else IMO it usually makes sense just to add multiple BizTalk servers in a group, and then use NLB for e.g. WCF Receive adapters.

The Rationale is that by running multiple host instances of each 'type' (e.g. 2+ Receive, 2+ Process, 2+ Send, etc), is that you also have the ability to stop and start host instances without any downtime, e.g. for maintenance (patches), application deployment, etc.

The one caveat with the Group approach is that SSO master doesn't failover automatically, although this isn't usually a problem as the other servers will still be able to work from cache.

Answer 2

You can configure a BizTalk Group in multi-computer environment. You can refer to the doc available at MSDN download center for more details. The document specifically has a section titled "Considerations for clustering BizTalk Server in a Multiple Server environment"

You can also additionally configure your BizTalk host as a clustered resource. You can refer to the documentation available at MSDN for more details.