There are multiple Microsoft customers in search of BizTalk monitoring tools for their BizTalk Infrastructure. Now a days, Microsoft BizTalk Server is used as Enterprise application middleware in various organisations.
On a good day, BizTalk server will work like a charm and automate various business processes. However, on a not so good day (Friday evening worse case), a service might go down due to some patch, network scan or "scheduled upgrade".
Recently a friend of mine mentioned an incident where a client's production line was shut down as they didn't receive any orders, where the orders was just sitting suspended in BizTalk admin console. This might seem like a small issue but if you look at the larger picture, a shutdown of production line for a day can cost businesses a fortune.
This highlights one of the key requirements in BizTalk Server, i.e. monitoring.
Critical Challenge
A production line shutdown for even one day can cost businesses a fortune. Proactive monitoring is essential to prevent costly downtime and ensure business continuity.
Organisation sometimes don't want to spend a fortune on monitoring solutions and would just like to have a simple monitoring tool with few key features. This blog is for those organisations, who would like to have basic monitoring for BizTalk Server. If you are looking for an enterprise level monitoring solution, it will be discussion in our future blogs.
Few years back, Microsoft introduced a BizTalk monitoring which provided email-based monitoring alerts. There are few third-party products that we will compare in the blog who have key features required to perform basic BizTalk Server monitoring.
We will start with an introduction of the products and compare key features that we believe are must have in a BizTalk environment.
Monitoring Tools Overview
We will briefly state what the product owners have to say about their products, source URL and deep down into the key features for comparison.
BizTalk Notifier
BizTalk Notifier is a BizTalk Monitoring tool that notifies you in real-time the status of the artefacts (Ports, Orchestration & Hosts) that you are monitoring. Get notified within minutes as soon as your monitored artefacts go down. BizTalk monitoring has never been easy with continuous email notification alerts until services are restored.
BizTalk 360
BizTalk 360 comes with a wide range of features to help you monitor and administer your BizTalk Server environments. These features will enhance operational security, increase productivity, provide proactive alerting for issues and facilitate auto-healing.
BizTalk Health Monitor
BHM is an MMC snap-in that allows the user to monitor the health of BizTalk Server environments and execute maintenance tasks.
Key Features Comparison
Below is a key features table to compare products against each other
BizTalk Monitoring Tool Feature Comparison
Detailed Analysis
Notifications & Reporting
BizTalk out of the box doesn't notify you if any ports/hosts/applications go down.
Usability, Configuration & Setup
Licensing & Cost
Our Recommendation
Choose your BizTalk monitoring tool based on your enterprise size, budget, and monitoring complexity requirements. Small-medium businesses should consider BizTalk Notifier, while enterprises may benefit from BizTalk 360's comprehensive features.