Set up notifications when Biztalk send/receive ports stop or are disabled

Question

We have a Biztalk 2006 R2 server, and from time to time, the receive ports will change to "Disabled" status for any one of a number of reasons - most commonly, server maintenance elsewhere on the network causes the file share they point to to become unavailable, so it stops the port. This causes trouble when transmissions we expect to happen every day no longer happen due to the stopped port, since it doesn't automatically start up again on its own.

Is there a native way to set up alerts when these ports stop, or do I need to write a job that queries the SQL Server directly and emails me when the port status changes in the database?

Answer 1

There is no native way. But there are examples in the SDK directory ( under biztalk) of vb scripts that starts receive location. You can schedule a job that will run every minute and will query the status of the receive location, and start it if necessary.

Answer 2

If you have Systems Centre Operations Manager, you can download the BizTalk SCOM Pack. You can monitor receive ports under the Receive Ports State View.

There are also some other BizTalk monitoring tools - Bizmon, Minotaur and Helium. Steef Jan Wiggers evaluates them here