At my previous employer, when developing for BizTalk Server 2004 using Visual Studio 2003, we made use of separate development and deployment environments; developing in Visual Studio on our client PCs and then deploying to a seperate shared BizTalk 2004 Server from there. This server was part of a multi-server Standard BizTalk environment comprising of separate BizTalk Server 2004 and SQL Server 2000 servers. This environment was implemented a number of years ago by an outside consulting company, and while it worked it did occasionally cause contention issues with three developers deploying to the same server to carry out unit testing!
Now that I am making the design and implementation decisions about the environment that BizTalk will be developed in and deployed to, I have chosen to create a single "server" installation on my development PC, installling SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and BizTalk Server 2009 on a single system.
The client PC in use is actually a MacBook Pro running Windows XP; not the most powerful of systems for high volume processing but it should be powerful enough to allow development and initial unit testing to take place.
I did not need to, and so chose not to, install all of the components detailed in the Microsoft guide for installing BizTalk 2009 on Windows XP but I did follow the basics of the procedures detailed within. Outlined below are the highlights of this process and any details of what choices I made.
Install IIS
I had previsouly installed Windows XP, including all current service packs and critical updates. At the time of installation this included Service Pack 3, the .Net Framework 3.5 and MS Windows Installer 3.1. Having a running XP system, my first step was to install IIS - this is quite straightforward and posed no difficulties.
Install Visual Studio 2008
The next step for me was to install Visual Studio 2008.
Making sure to select a custom installation is crucial at this point, as you need to make sure that you deselect SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as it can cause the BizTalk installation to fail.
The installation guide suggests that you only select Visual C# when selecting features to install, but I decided that due to some legacy systems I have code for that I would also select the VB and ASP options.
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
Following the completion of the installation of Visual Studio itself you should then install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition
The next step before intalling BizTalk Server 2009 itself is to install SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition.
On the feature selection screen make sure that you select the follwoing options:
Database Engine Services
SQL Server Replication
Full-Text Search
Analysis Services
Reporting Services
Business Intelligence Development Studio
Client Tools Connectivity
Integration Services
Management Tools Basic and Complete
Use the default instance and the same accounts for all SQL server instances - in my case I used the Network Service and Local Service accounts for the two sets of accounts.
On the database engine configuration screen I selected windows authentication and added the current user, adding the same user again on the Analysis services Configuration screen. All other screens were left on the default settings.
The SQL Server 2008 installation also included the installation of hotfix for XP KB942288-v3, the Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable.
System Configuration
At this stage I took a moment to disable the SQL Server shared memory protocol and enable the Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols. These can be found in the SQL Server Configuration Manager > SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for MSSQLServer.
I also made sure that the DTC settings were configured correctley.
BizTalk Server 2009
The penultimate step is to install BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Edition.
I had previsouly downloaded the redistributable prerequisites as a CAB file so was able to make use of this when carrying out the installation.
When selecting which components to install I selected:
Server Runtime
BizTalk EDI/AS2 Runtime
WCF Adapter Runtime
Portal Components
Administrative Tools
WFC Administartion Tools
Developer Tools and SDK, Enterprise SSO Administration Module
Enterprise SSO Master Secret Server
Business Rules Components
BAM Alert Provider
BAM Client
BAM Eventing
Once installation has completed clear the launch BizTalk Server Configuration check box and select finish.
Verify the Installation
Before configuring BizTalk Server it is a good idea to check that BizTalk Server 2009 is installed and that SQL Server 2008 has started correctly.
The easiest way to verify the BizTalk installation is check the Programs and Features in Control panel.
Check that SQL is started by looking in the SQL Server Configuration Manager.
Configure BizTalk Server 2009
Finally we are ready to configure BizTalk Server 2009. To start this I opted for a custom configuration that allowed me to choose in more detail the settings to be used.
For all databases I selected the local server and default database names.
For all Accounts I used a local account that had been created specifically for the BizTalk Services.
For all windows groups I allowed the configuration wizard to create the default local groups.
The configuration wizard then ran:
Upon completion you will be presented with a screen detailing the success or failure of the configuration. If your configuration failed you will need to sort out the issues and try again (it is possible to save the configuration settings for later use if you want too - except passwords of course!).
If you see lots of nice green ticks - congratulations BizTalk Server 2009 on XP is now installed and configured ready for development.
