BizTalk 2020 CU 3

BizTalk 2020 CU 3 is now available at, KB5007969 – Cumulative Update 3 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020

Fixes for adapters include

  • WCF fix for proxy settings
  • 2 fixes for MQSeries
  • 2 fixes for WCF-SAP
  • 1 fix for the SharePoint adapter
  • 1 fix for the Office365 Outlook Email adapter

Improvements

On the blog post that announced it, they also say

As a quick reminder, for BizTalk Developer Tools please also update/install version 3.13.2.0 of the BizTalk Server Visual Studio extension in addition to installing the CU package. The extension can be installed from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-biztalk.BizTalk or from within Visual Studio – Manage Extensions. Please note that we have not updated the extension since CU1 so you can skip this step if you have already installed it previously.

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Max worker threads for SFTP, MQSC or DB in BizTalk

A about March or earlier, the latest rules for BizTalk Health Monitor started to show the following important warning.

BizTalk Health Monitor Important warning – The host instances of ‘ReceivingSFTP’ need more worker threads per cpu to run correctly SFTP Receive Locations. Increase so the “Maximum Worker Threads” property to 500 for these host instances and be sure they are dedicated for this SFTP Receive Locations

I had already been advising clients to run SFTP receive locations on a separate host instance due to issues where it would silently stop receiving requiring a host instance restart to resolve, possibly related to FIX: SFTP adapter receive locations stop working intermittently during higher load in BizTalk Server

BHM rule 637 – Suggest to Increase MaxWorkerThreads for SFTP, MQSC or DB2 Receive Locations

The rule itself also talks about MQSC and DB, but as I didn’t have any receive locations for those it was only warning about SFTP.

I’ve seen that warning even on a BizTalk 2010 environment that has a Custom SFTP adapter installed, possibly because it was also called simply SFTP. However it does not warn about third party SFTP adapters such as the nSoftware one which has a different name.

BizTalk Host Instance Settings – Maximum worker threads.

However, even after changing the Max worker threads to 500 and restarting the Host Instance and re-running BHM, the warning did not go away. Even moving the receive locations running on the nSoftware onto another host instance, and un-configuring the adapter on that host instance didn’t make any difference.

The BizTalk adapter’s default configuration is to poll every 5 seconds. This is rather excessive and should be reduced.

Recommendations for SFTP Receive Locations

  1. Have a dedicated host for receive locations using SFTP
  2. Increase the Maximum Worker threads setting to 500 on that host instance
  3. Check how frequently you poll (the default is 5 seconds), increase the delay if that is not needed.
  4. Put a schedule on to only poll during the periods you need.
  5. Disable message body tracking if it is not needed.

Cumulative Update 7 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016

CU 7 for BizTalk Server 2016 has been released, and also Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Update 3 with CU7

Important: Do not mix installing CU’s and Feature packs.

This CU contains

  • Four fixes/improvements for the SFTP adapter.
  • One fix for the IBM MQ.
  • One improvement for the the MQSeries adapters.
  • One fix for SAP (NCo) adapter.
  • One fix for the HL7 BizTalk Server Accelerators.
  • Five fixes around applying CU’s, Feature Packs and other setup and configuration changes (not counting the SFTP one which I’ve counted under adapters).
  • And a JSON FIX: JSON encoder unable to handle XML schema with the same name for record and one of its elements which is an issue that has caused grief for a few people.

Note: It has been reported on Twitter that “We have some issues with the new #biztalk CU7. The json encoder has started formatting boolean values as string values, like “true” instead of true.” and “As we wanted the FTP fixes in CU7 we installed it anyway and replaced the jsonextension dll with an older version.”

In that same thread “Little warning, rolling back CU7, does not rollback the jsonextension version.”

Also JSON encoder pipeline doesn’t create json array after installing CU7

Finding the SSH server host key fingerprint — BizMunch

Up till, and including, BizTalk Server 2016, the SFTP adapter included with BizTalk Server, has only supported SSH server host key fingerprints using the RSA algorithm, also called an RSA key fingerprint. Previously, you could connect to an SFTP server using FileZilla, and get the RSA key fingerprint that way. In recent versions, FileZilla will […]

Finding the SSH server host key fingerprint — BizMunch

BizTalk SFTP – Open SFTP connection error

TLDR Update: If you get this error, then it probably is the fact that BizTalk 2013 R2 uses an older version of Putty and doesn’t support the Cipher as per this thread Open SFTP connection error and the solutions as per that are

– Upgrade to BizTalk 2016/2020
– Change SFTP server to have matching algorithms as the SFTP client
– Use external script to do the transfer from/to file location, e g scheduled task psftp.exe
– 3rd party/own SFTP adapter, e g BizTalk community based Blogical SFTP adapter

NiklasEngfelt MSFT (MSFT)

Biztalk 2013 R2 SFTP adapter only supports hmac-sha1, hmac-sha1-96 and hmac-md5 MACs and KEX algorithm

BizTalk 2013 R2 SFTP adapter MACs or KexAlgorithms

The long story as it unfolded.

I was asked to set up some interfaces connecting a on premise FTP server and to send and receive files from two SFTP servers using BizTalk 2013 R2 (CU6).

The first one used a username & password combination and worked without any issues.  The other that used a username & public key however is throwing errors as below.

I can connect with FileZilla from the BizTalk server using the same username & .ppk file that are configured in BizTalk.

I’ve tried various things including the below.

  • Set Accept Any SSH Server Host Key = True 
  • Change Encryption Cipher from Auto to AES (same error), TripleDES (Cipher error)
  • Setting the Folder Path to / or .
  • Changing the Connection Limit = 1
  • Setting Polling Interval = 5 minutes
  • Making sure that it is running on a 64 bit host
  • Googling to try and find others that have encountered this and found a solution

I’ve posted about this on the thread Initialize error for SFTP adapter in BizTalk 2013 R2 which was very similar and on Open SFTP connection error which looks to be an identical error.  There was one fix FIX: “Open SFTP connection” error when you use the SFTP adapter in BizTalk Server, which was part of CU1, so either the issue has regressed, or it is a different issue that throws the same error.

Any clues as to what the cause might be and how to resolve this apart from?

  • Upgrading to BizTalk 2016
  • Using the bLogical adapter
  • Raising an issue with Microsoft (which will have to do if this cannot be resolved)
Receive Location:

The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "{ReceiveLocation}" with URL "sftp://{SERVER}:{PORT}/{FILEMASK}*.xml" to the adapter "SFTP". Reason: "Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.SftpInvoker.SftpException: Open SFTP connection error.
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.SftpInvoker.SftpInvoker.Open()
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Sftp.SftpConnection.OpenUnderlyingConnection(SftpConnectionProperties connectionProperties)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapters.CommonHelpers.Connection`3.ConnectionPool`3.GetConnection(T1 connectionProperties, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapters.CommonHelpers.Connection`3.GetConnection(T connectionProperties, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Sftp.SftpRLConfig.ValidateConfiguration(SftpReceivePropertyBag receivePropertyBag)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Sftp.SftpRLConfig.CreateBinding(RHConfig rhConfig)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.BtsServiceHostBase.InitializeRuntime()
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint.Enable()
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint..ctor(BizTalkEndpointContext endpointContext, IBTTransportProxy transportProxy, ControlledTermination control)


Send Port:

The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port "{SENDPORT}" with URL "sftp://{SERVER}:{PORT}/%SourceFileName%". It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details:"Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.SftpInvoker.SftpException: Open SFTP connection error.

Server stack trace: 
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.SftpInvoker.SftpInvoker.Open()
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Sftp.SftpConnection.OpenUnderlyingConnection(SftpConnectionProperties connectionProperties)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapters.CommonHelpers.Connection`3.ConnectionPool`3.GetConnection(T1 connectionProperties, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapters.CommonHelpers.Connection`3.GetConnection(T connectionProperties, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Sftp.SftpOutputChannel.Send(Message message, TimeSpan timeOut)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink._PrivateProcessMessage(IntPtr md, Object[] args, Object server, Object[]& outArgs)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink.AsyncProcessMessage(IMessage msg, IMessageSink replySink)

Exception rethrown at [0]: 
   at System.Runtime.AsyncResult.End[TAsyncResult](IAsyncResult result)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.SendAsyncResult.End(SendAsyncResult result)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.EndCall(String action, Object[] outs, IAsyncResult result)

Exception rethrown at [1]: 
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg)
   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOutputChannel.EndSend(IAsyncResult result)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfClient`2.SendCallback(IAsyncResult result)".

As we were getting no were fast resolving this, we also tried the nSoftware adapter from a BizTalk 2010 server.  Unfortunately this also didn’t work, but at least gave a meaningful error.

The adapter “nsoftware.SFTP v3” raised an error message. Details “Transmission failed for message “f99728a0-8791-42d7-b27e-c1d53feabd3e”: Error uploading SFTP file: Could not negotiate key exchange algorithm. Remote host supports the following algorithms: “diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256″.”.

According to the nSoftware documentation, this is supported (in V4), however the client only has V3 of that adapter (for which I cannot find the documentation so cannot confirm what is has to say about supporting that).  I’ve confirmed it does work with V4 now.

BizTalk 2013 R2 known bugs, issues & quirks

Below a list of know bugs, issues, & other quirks* of BizTalk 2013 R2 (mainly CU3) and Visual Studio 2013 (update 4) , but I will update with fixes as the CUs come out or when I know about a new issue, so if you have another one I will add it (and link to it if you have a blog about it) if you let me know.  This in addition to the ones listed by Microsoft on Known Issues in Installation, Configuration, and Deployment

I’ve now posted the below article on a TechNet wiki

* My definitions for classifying these are
Bug
: Causes negative impact and no known work around or requires a lot of effort to work around.
Issue: Causes negative impact but has an easy or quick work around.
Missing: A feature that BizTalk doesn’t have that would make our life easier.
Quirk:  Something strange or unusual but does not cause a negative impact so far as known.

Continue reading “BizTalk 2013 R2 known bugs, issues & quirks”
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