How to upgrade BizTalk Health Monitor from a previous version to the latest one

BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) is a BizTalk snap-in that can be added to the existing BizTalk Administration Console or can be run individually, that helps you monitor the health of your BizTalk Server environment. Basically, it’s similar to the “old” BizTalk MsgBoxViewer tool that we used to monitor a BizTalk environment by gathering all information of a BizTalk group and detecting any issues, non-critical or critical warnings to detect any potential problems in advance.

BHM is now in his third version, released on March 6, 2015, that you can download here and know more about it here.

The goal of this post is not to explain what it is the BizTalk Health Monitor, but instead, if you already have a previous version – V1 or V2 – how can you update to the latest one – V3. Do you need to uninstall the previous one?

Note: If you don’t have a previous version of BizTalk Health Monitor installed then check the post to describe the installation steps required.

• Installing the new BizTalk Health Monitor snap-in on BizTalk Server 2010 or BizTalk Server 2013

How to upgrade BizTalk Health Monitor to the latest version

Basically, you don’t need to uninstall V2 (or V1) to upgrade to the latest version, you just need to register the snap-in of the new one but there are some considerations that you need to be aware.

• First, if you have BizTalk Health Monitor integrated with the BizTalk Administration Console you need to close all the BizTalk Administration Console in all sessions, if not you need to close BizTalk Health Monitor in all sessions again, otherwise you cannot replace or delete the existing files.

Note: 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 (see BizTalk 2013 R2 CU1 install failing with “Package does not contain compatible branch patch”)

• After closing all consoles, choose a proper location in your drive, for example:
  • “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server Support Tools\BizTalkHealthMonitor”
• And unzip the version of the BHM zip file to this folder
  • You could also replace the existing files by the new ones, however, I already encountered some issues while registering the new version of the snap-in after doing that
  • Or you can create a new folder with these new resources.

Note: Once you register the BizTalk Health Monitor Snap-In you cannot delete or change the folder path or BHM will stop working.

• Open a command prompt as an administrator
• Navigate to the directory folder where you have the BHM resources
  • For example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server Support Tools\BizTalkHealthMonitor”
• And from the command prompt type:
  • InstallUtil.exe MBVSnapIn.dll
• And hit enter. This step will register the new version of the Snap-In to be used

Because you already add the BizTalk Health Monitor integrated with the BizTalk Administration Console you don’t need to do nothing more. Just open the BizTalk Administration Console and the last version of the BHM will be available.

Notes:

• If you replace the existing BHM files by the new ones and then try open the BizTalk Administration Console without registering the new BHM version you will receive the following error:
  • “MMC has detected an error in a snap-in and will unload it”

• If you replace the existing BHM files by the new ones and you find some kind of error while trying to register the snap-in then:
  • Delete all files from the directory and then copy again the files to the new BHM version to the folder
  • And register again the BHM span-in

Important Note: If you already replace some files under “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\SDK\Utilities\Support Tools\BizTalkHealthMonitor” or created a new BHM folder under “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\SDK\Utilities\Support Tools”, you should:

• Move the BHM folder to a place outside the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\SDK\Utilities\Support Tools” folder, for example to the suggested path described above
• Register the BHM Snap-In from this directory
• And delete all the BHM folders under the “Utilities” folder

otherwise, you will have issues installing BizTalk cumulative updates (see BizTalk 2013 R2 CU1 install failing with “Package does not contain compatible branch patch”)