BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) is a snap-in tool. In many ways, it replaces the old BizTalk MsgBoxViewer utility that administrators used to inspect a BizTalk environment.
BHM collects information about an entire BizTalk group and detects both warnings and critical issues. As a result, administrators can identify potential problems early. The major difference is that BHM integrates much more closely with the BizTalk Administration Console. Therefore, administrators get a fast and complete dashboard to monitor the platform’s health.
Originally, Microsoft introduced BHM as a feature of BizTalk Server 2013 R2. However, Microsoft later released a standalone version that also works with BizTalk Server 2010 and BizTalk Server 2013.
You can download the standalone version from the Microsoft Download Center: BizTalk Health Monitor.
📝 One-Minute Brief
This post explains how to install the BizTalk Health Monitor Snap-in on BizTalk Server 2010 or BizTalk Server 2013. It covers prerequisites, installing the BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) tool, and adding the snap-in to Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The article helps BizTalk administrators deploy the BHM tool to monitor performance, diagnose issues, and analyze the health of BizTalk environments.
How to install BizTalk Health Monitor snap-in
Prerequisites:
- BizTalk Server 2010 or 2013 should be installed and configured.
How to register BizTalk Health Monitor Snap-In
After you download and unzip the BHM.ZIP file from the Microsoft Download Center, run the InstallUtil.exe, which comes with the BizTalk Health Monitor tool, to register the BHM snap-in.
Important: You shouldn’t replace or create a new BHM folder under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\SDK\Utilities\Support Tools otherwise you will have issues installing BizTalk cumulative updates.
Important: Unzip the BHM.ZIP to a final destination before you register the snap-in for example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Support Tools\BHM. Once you register the BizTalk Health Monitor Snap-In you cannot delete the folder or BHM will stop working
Note: New versions of the BHM snap-in (version 3.1) don’t include the InstallUtil.exe file anymore.
- You can still use the old “InstallUtil.exe” file to register the snap-in (but you need to copy this file to the BHM folder)
- But instead, you should use the BHMSetup.exe file, which will register the snap-in in a simpler way.
To accomplish that, we need to:
- Open a command prompt as an administrator.
- Navigate to the directory file where you unzipped the BHM.ZIP file.
- For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Support Tools\BHM.
- And from the command prompt type:
- InstallUtil.exe MBVSnapIn.dll.
- And hit enter. This step will do some registry changes and register the SnapIn to be used.
How to integrate BHM Snap-In into BizTalk Admin Console
Important note: BHM Snap-In can be used independently and don’t need to be integrated with the BizTalk Administration Console. The handicap of this approach is that a BizTalk Administration will need to use two different places/tools to monitor and administrate the environment.
To be easier and more convenient for BizTalk Administrators, the BHM Snap-In can also be integrated so that it can be used with the BizTalk Administration Console.
To accomplish that, we need to open a 32-bit Microsoft Management Console (MMC):
- Click Start, click Run, type:
- mmc /32.
- Press enter or click OK. This will open a new 32-bit version of MMC (MMC32).
- From the MMC console, go to the File menu and select the Options… option.
- In the text box, replace Console1 with BizTalk Administration Console.
- In the Console mode combo box, select User mode – full access.
- And confirm that the option Do not save changes to this console is unchecked.
- From the MMC console, go to the File menu and select the Add/Remove Snap-in… option.
- From the Add or Remove Snap-ins window, add the following snap-ins and then click Ok.
- BizTalk Server Administration
- BizTalk Health Monitor
- You can add the snap-ins by selecting them from the Available snap-ins list and clicking Add >.
- Is recommend that you respect the order present in the Selected snap-ins list as shown in the picture above
Now you might want to save this as a new .msc file so that you don’t have to repeat these steps again, but before we complete the creation process of the “new” BizTalk Administration Console, I recommend that you navigate to the BizTalk Server Installation folder:
- Example: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.
- And rename the BTSmmc.msc file, for example: BTSmmc-old.msc.
This is because we will save the “new” BizTalk Administration Console as BTSmmc.msc so that you don’t need to create new shortcuts or have different ways to access the BizTalk Administration Console; however, this step is optional!
To finish the creation process of the “new” BizTalk Administration Console
- From the MMC console, go to the File menu and select the Save As… option:
- Give a name and then save it.
- Access to the BizTalk Server Installation folder
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.
- Save the file as BTSmmc.msc.
- Access to the BizTalk Server Installation folder
- Give a name and then save it.
From next time onwards, when you open the BizTalk Server Administration Console:
The “new” BizTalk Administration Console will be incorporated with the BizTalk Health Monitor:
You can download the standalone version of BHM from the Microsoft Download Center here: BizTalk Health Monitor.
Thank you, Sandro, this was really helpful! 🙂
This is super! good work Sandro
great article. I had no idea it was going to be backwards compatible with 2010