Hello BizTalkers,

Finally, Microsoft released the beta version of BizTalk Server 2010 R2 and now its called BizTalk Server 2013. I had tried the BTS 2010 R2 CTP version on Windows Azure VM and particularly I was excited about the RESTful services support and ESB fully integrated into BizTalk. Well didn’t get chance to test it much, Azure & VM running cost associated . Anyways, I was waiting for this announcement and I was so much glad that Microsoft finally released the on premise one.  Check what’s new in the BizTalk Server 2013.  Officially Microsoft says that BizTalk Server 2013 “beta” is not supported on Windows 8 but I was curious to try it out. Below is my installation and configuration experience.

Virtual Machine configuration:

• VM Ware Workstation 9.0.
• Windows 8 Enterprise x64.
• SQL Server 2012.
• Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate.
• BizTalk Server 2013 beta.
• Windows 8 Machine name: WIN8
• Local Administrator account name: Admin

First I installed Windows 8 Enterprise on a VM Ware Workstation 9.0 and updated the OS. Even Windows 8 is the new release so luckily didn’t had much updates to perform.

Next Installed Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate which was straightforward installation.

Next Installed SQL Server 2012. Select New SQL Server stand-alone installation & followed the steps as shown in the screenshot below.

 

Once the installation is finished, fire up SQL Server Management Studio and try connecting. Initially when the management studio opened up, I thought why did Visual Studio 2010 open when I tried opening SQL Management studio but well, they made the interface alike VS 2010. Cool, I like it.

Next is the real deal, download the BizTalk Server 2013 and unzip to particular folder. Double click the Setup.exe and follow the steps in the screenshots.

Install Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 beta.

I selected all the normal artifacts and also all the artifacts under Additional Software's.

So far so good. Next Launch BizTalk Server Configuration and I used Basic configuration as shown in screenshot below.

Didn’t expect to see this but “wala”. Successful in the first shot. Still I wasn’t sure & something would have gone wrong so fired up the BizTalk Server Administration Console and that too came up just fine.

Still was not able to believe so created a simple messaging application:  message in –> message out and that too worked just fine. Finally I was convinced that BizTalk Server 2013 did work on Windows 8.

Next step was to install the ESB Toolkit 2.2 which is now integrated with BizTalk Server and does not come as a separate standalone installation file. Again run the BizTalk Setup.exe from the unzipped folder.

Install Microsoft ESB Toolkit.

Next, unlike ESB Configuration would  not open up by itself so go to “Windows 8 so called Start” (I could not resist to write this) and open the ESB Toolkit Configuration wizard. Below screenshot display the configurations I used. Also you can find them on MSDN here.

Finally after the ESB Configuration, I open Admin Console and checked the 2 ESB application deployed. Cool. This concludes my experience about installation and configuration of BizTalk Server 2013 Beta & ESB Toolkit 2.2 on Windows 8.

I will try and keep writing about BizTalk Server 2013 and its use with RESTful Services etc.

Thanks,

Vishal Mody