Hi,

We are planning a Biztalk 2009 set up in which we have 2 Biztalk Application Servers and 2 DB Servers (DB servers being in an Active/Passive Cluster). All servers are running Windows Server 2008 R2.

As part of our application, we will have incoming traffic via the MSMQ, FILE and SOAP adapters. We also have a requirement for High-availability and Load-balancing.

Let's say I create two different Biztalk Hosts and assign the FILE receive handler to the first one and the MSMQ receive handler to the second one. I now create two host instances for each of the two hosts (i.e. one for each of my two physical servers).

After reviewing the Biztalk Documentation, this is what I know so far:

• For FILE (Receive), high-availablity and load-balancing will be achieved by Biztalk automatically because I set up a host instance on each of the two servers in the group.

• MSMQ (Receive) requires Biztalk Host Clustering to ensure high-availability (Host Clustering however requires Windows Failover Clustering to be set up as well). No loading-balancing option is clear here.

• SOAP (Receive) requires NLB to achieve Load-balancing and High-availability (if one server goes down, NLB will direct traffic to the other).

This is where I'm completely puzzled and I desperately need your help:

• Is it possible to have a Windows Failover Cluster and NLB set up at the same time on the two application servers?
  • If yes, then please tell me how.
  • If no, then please explain to me how anyone is acheiving high-availability and load-balancing for MSMQ and SOAP when their underlying prerequisites are mutually exclusive!

Your help is greatly appreciated,
M