I installed Windows XP Professional with SP 2 today and was amazed to see this when I ran Windows Update:

96 updates!

It literally took longer to install all the Windows XP updates than it did to install Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer Edition.  Amazing!

Maybe it's time for SP 3?

Operational monitoring (OM) is a practice that is sorely underused, in my opinion.  OM is a performance and event monitoring practice that allows you to respond to errors and gain insight into machines on your network.  Microsoft has two flagship products for operational monitoring: Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007.  Through MOM and SCOM you can monitor your Microsoft server products, such as SQL Server, Web Sites, and even Commerce Server 2007.

There are a number of benefits to using OM, including:

• Receive notification of critical errors and warnings
• Automatically respond to errors and warnings
• Gain insight into performance and trends to preempt future problems

Both MOM and SCOM use an agent (a piece of software installed on the monitored machine) to track the performance and events on monitored machines.  The agent watches a number of different sources on the computer, such as the Event Log, and then centralizes this information on the OM server where it is stored in a database.  The OM server applies filters and rules, and will notify individuals and/or groups if necessary.  Additionally, they can respond to events by running scripts or executables on the monitored machine.

While you can define your own events and thresholds to monitor your machines, you can also take advantage of pre-built management packs.  These management packs are designed by the corresponding product team (e.g. the Commerce Server 2007 MOM pack is designed by the Commerce Server team) so that the monitored events and defined thresholds are most appropriate for the product.

Installing MOM 2005

The process for installing MOM 2005 with Service Pack 1 is pretty straightforward (especially if you're installing it on one machine).  Take a look at the following documentation for detailed steps:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mom/mom2005/Library/b7b0c768-64d1-486e-b9ed-7292c9e545f9.mspx?mfr=true

There are four steps involved in installing MOM 2005:

1. Installing SQL Server and MOM 2005
2. Discovering computers and deploying agents
3. Install MOM 2005 reporting (optional)
4. Import management packs

I suggest that, before you install MOM 2005, you take advantage of the "Check Prerequisites" tool to make sure that you've properly configured your server.

If you have problems installing agents on step two, take a look at the following KB article: ttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/883335/en-us.  Turns out I had a DNS issue on one of the machines I wanted push an agent onto; after resolving the DNS issue I had no problems.

Once you have successfully installed and configured MOM 2005 (steps 1 through 3) you are ready to import various management packs.

Configuring the MOM Pack for Commerce Server 2007

You must first download the MOM 2005 pack for Commerce Server 2007.  When you run the executable you must specify the location to place the files.

I suggest you use the default location for management packs: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Operations Manager 2005\Management Packs\.  This way, when you run the import from the MOM 2005 Administrator Console, you won't have to change the default location.

To import the management pack you must do the following:

1. Open the MOM 2005 Administrator Console
2. Browse to Microsoft Operations Manager (<Computer Name>) --> Management Packs
3. Right-click Management Packs and select Import/Export Management Pack.
4. Choose the Import a management pack, and click Next.
5. Lave the default location for the management packs, which is where you installed the Commerce Server 2007 MOM Pack.  Click Next to continue.
   
6. Select the Microsoft Commerce Server 2007.akm management pack to import.  Click Next to continue.
7. On the summary page, click Finish.

Once you have installed the management pack you must then specify your Commerce Server 2007 servers.  To do this, you must do the following.

1. Open the MOM 2005 Administrator Console
2. Browse to Microsoft Operations Manager (<Computer Name>) --> Management Packs --> Computer Groups --> Microsoft Commerce Server 2007.
3. Right-click Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 and choose click Properties.
4. Select the Included Computers tab and click Add.
5. Select the Commerce Server computers you wish to monitor, and click OK.

Now your Commerce Server 2007 servers are being monitored by MOM 2005.

I would say that the "out-of-the-box" settings for the MOM pack are okay about 90% of the time.  The key is to get a baseline for your environments and potentially fine tune the settings based on your findings.

SCOM 2007 and the 2005 MOM Pack

According to the CS product team there is no native SCOM 2007 pack planned at this time.  However, the MOM 2005 pack is supposed to work with SCOM 2007.  While I haven't tried this myself, I've been told by multiple sources that it should work and that this is the supported model.

If I get the opportunity to test this I'll be sure to update this post.

Additional Resources

In addition to the Commerce Server 2007 MOM Pack you may also want to use the following MOM packs:

• Web Sites and Services Management Pack for MOM 2005
• SQL Server Management Pack for MOM 2005

While the Commerce Server 2007 MOM Pack tracks the health of your Commerce Server environment, it doesn't really monitor the health of your Web Site (i.e. IIS).  Additionally, there are events and thresholds in the SQL Server pack that are also worthwhile.

At the very least, make sure you review the following white paper: Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 MOM Pack White Paper.

Also, here are some good blogs/sites to track:

• Operations Manager Product Team Blog
• OpsMgr, SCE And MOM Blog
• System Center Community
• Scripting for Microsoft Operations Management (MOM)

MOM 2005 and SCOM 2007 are great resources and you should definitely take the time to learn more about them.

I hope this helps!

04/13/2008 - Please see this post for information regarding this book.

It has been awhile since I last posted about the status of the book Professional Commerce Server 2007, so I thought I'd share some news and exciting developments.

First of all, I am very happy to announce that Tom Schultz has agreed to participate in writing the book and will author a number of chapters.  Tom is a senior consultant with the Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), and is particularly focused on e-commerce and the Commerce Server product.  Tom's extensive real world knowledge and expertise will bring tremendous value to this book, and I am really excited to work with him.

The book is on schedule and still targeted to hit the shelves in Q1, 2008.

Here is the table of contents for the book.  At this point there really won't be any major changes:

Part I: Getting Started

1    Technology Primer
2    First Steps
3    The Commerce Server Architecture

Part II - Commerce Server Overview

4    The Catalog System
5    The Inventory System
6    The Orders System
7    The Profiles System
8    The Marketing System
9    The Commerce Server Adapters for BizTalk Server 2006
10    Commerce Server Staging
11    The Data Warehouse Analytics System
12    The Business Processing Pipeline System

Part III: Developing with Commerce Server

13    Commerce Server 2007 Development
14    Developing with the Catalog System
15    Developing with the Inventory System
16    Developing with the Orders System
17    Developing with the Profile System
18    Developing with the Marketing System
19    Customizing the Business Management Applications
20    Modifying and Extending the Data Warehouse
21    Building and Customizing SQL Reporting Services
22    Advanced Topics with the Commerce Server Adapters
23    Operational Monitoring

Part IV: Commerce Server in Production

24    Production Architectures
25    Building Your Production Environments
26    Deploying Commerce Server

Appendix

A    APIs
B    FAQ and Answers
C    Tips and Tricks

Tom and I will continue to work diligently on finalizing the content of the book.  Our goal is to provide our peers (i.e. you!) with the knowledge required to successfully architect, implement, deploy, and support enterprise solutions using Commerce Server 2007.

As I was putting together the demonstration for the talk I'm giving tomorrow on BizTalk Server R2 and the WCF Adapters I had to do a few things to get some basic examples working, as this was a brand new virtual environment.  I thought I'd document some of the actions I had to take.

1. Registering the "WCF-BasicHttp" adapter.

After creating and deploying an orchestration for use with the "WCF-BasicHttp" adapter, I received the following error:

The Messaging Engine failed to register the adapter for "WCF-BasicHttp" for the receive location "/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc". Please verify that the receive location exists, and that the isolated adapter runs under an account that has access to the BizTalk databases.

I had to take two steps to resolve the problem.  First, create a new application pool and set the identity to the service account used by the isolated host instance.  Second, give the service account used by the isolated host instance read/write access to the C:\Windows\Temp\ directory.

2. Can't find the "SvcUtil.exe" console application.

Turns out that I had forgotten to install the Windows SDK and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components.  See my previous post on how to setup a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 development environment for more information.

3. "SvcUtil.exe" failed when generating the service metadata.

When I ran the command "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin\SvcUtil.exe"
http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl I ended up getting the following error:

Error: Cannot obtain Metadata from http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl

If this is a Windows (R) Communication Foundation service to which you have access, please check that you have enabled metadata publishing at the specified address.  For help enabling metadata publishing, please refer to the MSDN documentation at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=65455.

WS-Metadata Exchange Error
    URI: http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl
    Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl'.
    Content Type application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 was not supported by service http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl .  The client and service bindings may be mismatched.
    The remote server returned an error: (415) Cannot process the message because the content type 'application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8' was not the expected type 'text/xml; charset=utf-8'..

HTTP GET Error
    URI: http://localhost/SampleWCFDemo/SampleWCFDemo_Process_ProcessPort.svc?wsdl

Additionally, when I loaded the WSDL in Internet Explorer, I got the message:

Metadata publishing for this service is currently disabled.

Turns out that I had to change the service behavior to allow the metadata to be published.  You can do this by modifying the Web.Config file of the service so that "httpHelpPageEnabled" is set to true:

<behavior name="ServiceBehaviorConfiguration">
    <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpsGetEnabled="false" />
</behavior>

Changing the value from "false" to "true" resolves the problem.

...

Those were the three issues that came up tonight.  I'm sure there will be more, and I'll post the resolutions when I can.

I hope this helps!

In preparation for the talk I am giving tomorrow on BizTalk Server R2 and the WCF Adapters, I thought I would post some notes on how to setup and configure a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 development environment.

The installation is really quite straightforward.  Start with a relatively clean machine (I suggest you use a virtual machine, as these are all beta bits).  My (virtual) machine had the following installed before I started the R2 installation:

• Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition with Service Pack 2
• IIS 6.0
• Microsoft .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer Edition with Service Pack SP1
• SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack SP2

Additionally, you need to install the Windows SDK and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components.  This gives you the documentation, samples, header files, libraries, and tools you need to develop applications that run on Windows.  You can download this from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C2B1E300-F358-4523-B479-F53D234CDCCF&displaylang=en.  Note: it takes awhile, so be patient.  Also, I removed the documentation and samples, which makes the download and installation a lot faster.

From here you just need to download the R2 bits.  To find out how you can obtain BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (beta 2), take a look at this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936046.  Or, if you want me to save you the work and take you directly to the bits, you can go here: https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=65&DownloadID=6014.

The BizTalk 2006 R2 Beta 2 release includes the following components:

• BizTalk core engine
• EDI
• RFID
• LOB Adapters
• BizTalk Accelerators (HL7, SWIFT, RosettaNet)

The components are available by downloading and installing the following files:

• BTS06R2_Beta2.exe
• BTS06R2_Beta2_Accelerators.zip
• BizTalk LOB Adapters Sp1 Beta2.exe
• CustomSOAPHeaderPipeline.zip

Note: if you only want the R2 functionality (e.g. WCF, etc) you only need BTS06R2_Beta2.exe.

After I downloaded all the files, I first extracted the contents of BTS06R2_Beta2.exe to a temporary folder (choose a folder you can remember, like C:\Temp\BTS06R2_Beta2).  Next, I ran Setup.exe from that folder.  Click Next until you get to the Component Installation screen.  You'll see that there are a few differences from the standard BizTalk components.  Here's a peak:

I decided to leave the default settings.  Feel free to do what you want.  Continue to click Next until you get to the Summary screen.  Review your selections and click Install (you may also want to set your auto-login credentials to save time).

After it installs you have to run the BizTalk Configuration Tool.  The configuration is roughly the same as it is for BizTalk Server 2006:

I don't plan on using many of the features at the moment (e.g. BAM, HWS, etc.) so I only installed the following features:

And that's it!  At this point, you will have BizTalk 2006 R2 (beta 2) installed and functioning.  Open up the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console and take a look at the adapters now available to you:

Specifically, you now can use the following adapters:

• WCF-BasicHttp
• WCF-Custom
• WCF-CustomIsolated
• WCF-NetMsmq
• WCF-NetNamedPipe
• WCF-NetTcp
• WCF-WSHttp

I hope this helps you explore the new functionality available to you in BizTalk Server 2006 R2.  Enjoy!

I know this notice is late, but I will be presenting a talk entitled "BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and the WCF Adapters" to the Denver BizTalk User Group tomorrow.  Here's the link to the event:

BizTalk User Group: BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and the WCF Adapters

The event will take place at the Denver Microsoft building at the following address:

Maroon Bells Room
7595 Technology Way
Suite 400 Denver Colorado 80237
United States

Here's the event abstract ...

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 provides new adapters that enable simple communication to and from BizTalk Server and Web services-based applications via the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Through the WCF Adapter SDK you can utilize these new extensions to write WCF-based transports to expose existing technologies and applications. We will discuss real world uses for the WCF adapters and provide a demonstration of these adapters in action.

I'll post my slide deck and some bits after the presentation.  I hope to see  you there!

I was able to use the XML sample documents that come with eConnect (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Great Plains\eConnect9\XML Sample Documents\Incoming) to write some test data into my GP database using the eConnect 9.0 adapters for BizTalk Server 2006.  I setup a test environment using the TWO database for Great Plains, and through the adapter was able to insert data.  Feeling that I had made some good progress, I shutdown my machine (they are all virtualized environments) and went home for the night.

When I started everything up the next day I tried to reproduce this behavior so that I could move on with my integration.  However, every time I tried to write the document into GP through the adapter, I got the following error:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:  BizTalk DW Reporting
Event ID:      1000
Description:   Faulting application btsntsvc.exe, version 3.5.1602.0, stamp 4410e6b9, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4062, stamp 46264680, debug? 0, fault address 0x0000bee7.

This had me stumped for a little while.  I decided to use a useful tool I received from Microsoft called the Direct Document Sender.NET (I've attached the file at the bottom of this post) to try and diagnose the problem.  This tool allows you to post an XML document directly to eConnect so that you can test out the functionality without any 3rd party application (e.g. BizTalk Server).

Using this application, I tried to post the XML file again.  This time I received a much more useful error:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8000401A): The server process could not be started because the configured identity is incorrect.  Check the username and password.

Aha!  This was a much more useful error!

I opened up Component Services (Start --> Administrative Tools --> Component Services), and browsed to Computers --> My Computer --> COM+ Applications --> eConnect 9 for Great Plains.  The Microsoft Great Plains eConnect Version 9 COM Plus Package has a tab entitled Identity which allows you to define the user account under which the application runs.  Turns out that somehow my account was switched from the user I specified at installation to the interactive user system account:

And this was the root cause of my problem.  eConnect requires integrated security and uses the user specified in this identity tab to access the GP database.  Consequently, the user specified must have access to the appropriate database on the GP server and also be a part of the DYNGRP role.

So, I went ahead and added my user to the DYNGRP role, made sure it had the appropriate access, and then updated account used by the COM+ package:

Having made these changes, I tested with the Document Sender.NET application - worked the first time!  Confidently I tested with BizTalk, and sure enough everything started to work!

I'm not sure why it initially worked and then stopped working after I restarted the machines.  I'm not sure if the account credentials changed or if something else was happening the first time.  All I know is that you have to use an appropriate user that has access to the database and is a member of the appropriate role, otherwise you'll get the errors I listed above.

I hope this helps!

DirectDoc9.zip (7.42 KB)

Lately it seems that I have had to acquire a lot of hotfixes for Microsoft products.  Unfortunately, most of the KB articles don't provide a link to the hotfix, but instead ask you to contact Microsoft Support (via phone) to acquire the hotfix.  Kind of a pain!

Fortunately, my friend Rich Finn just passed along this useful link:

Hotfix Request Web Submission Form

Very useful ... no longer will I have to reach out an contact individual escalation engineers I've worked with in the past. <sheepish grin>

While reading Scott Bellware's blog today, I came across his Simpson's alter ego, courtesy of Simpsonize Me.  I had to try it out!

Evidently, here's what I look like as a Simpson's character ... the likeness is uncanny:

Here's me taking a trip to the Quik-E-Mart:

Personally, I think my wife makes a better looking Simpson character than I do:

My daughters also make cute Simpson's characters:

Neat stuff!  Give it a try.