Initial Post – New BizTalk Performance Blog

· Do you use BizTalk Server 2006?

· Do you need to understand the performance characteristics of your BizTalk solutions?

· Have you tried to document the performance of your solution and been frustrated by

o A lack of specific information about BizTalk Performance

o Not finding step-by-step guidance on profiling your solution’s performance

o Other frustrations? (please comment or email me about your frustrations)

· Have you had some success and want to share it with the world?

o Were the results positive or negative?

o What were the side effects?

o What results did you get?

· Do your customers or stakeholders require you to conduct a Performance Lab to document the solution of an existing or proposed solution?

· Do you dream of a world in which visibility into the performance characteristics of your BizTalk Solution would be guided by some sort of dashboard or application?

o What does your dream look like?

o What would you have such a dashboard or application do and look like?

This blog is specifically for people who answer yes to two or more of these questions. I will commit to at least 3 posts weekly via this blog. I will discuss, explain, point to knowledge, give insight and guidance, discuss techniques and provide other informational nuggets regarding the performance of BizTalk solutions.

With the help of the community, via email and comments, this blog will hopefully evolve into three specific uses:

1. A Compendium of Knowledge Regarding Performance of BizTalk Server 2006 based solutions

This blog will become a compendium of knowledge regarding the understanding, measurement, tuning and exploration of BizTalk Server 2006 Performance. I will write original content, point to interesting articles written by others, and provide a discussion forum for related ideas.

2. Provide a living and ever improving Delivery Guide for conducting BizTalk Performance Labs

This section will begin by outlining a Table of Contents for such a guide, and proceed by fleshing out the initial TOC. Evolution of the guide will hopefully occur via feedback from the community on both the taxonomy and content included. This effort is started by me, but I sincerely hope that others will see value in the effort and want to contribute. Contributions from the community are always welcome and will, of course, be fully credited.

3. Collaborate with the community to discuss and evolve a vision for an application or other type of automated capability which would deserve the title, ‘BizTalk Server Performance Explorer’

Do you wish that an application existed to help developers, architects, and IT Pros explore, understand, and document the performance of BizTalk Server solutions? I spend a lot of time thinking about just such an animal.

During my day job, I conduct Performance Lab engagements for some of Microsoft’s most strategic and visible BizTalk Server customers. My dream is to one day be replaced by an application that any developer could use to document a given BizTalk solution’s performance identify potential bottlenecks, and explore infrastructure, configuration and possibly application design changes that could remove the bottlenecks and optimize performance.

So, if you’ve read this far, I would invite you to subscribe to this blog via RSS and travel with me. This journey will no doubt be rife with dragons, monsters and all manner of evil, but then some of us like dealing with such things. With some effort, we can take what was black magic and convert it into a science.