We’ve recently had some development and test BizTalk environments move data centres, and after the BizTalk Server machines were restarted the BizTalk host instance services stayed disabled.

By default the BizTalk host instance service (the windows services named ‘BizTalk Service BizTalk Group: <host name>’) have a start up type of Automatic. There is a known issue with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista where the Enterprise Single Sign-On service doesn’t start quickly enough and the BizTalk host services end up failing to start.

The resolution is simple: change the start up types for the BizTalk services on all the BizTalk machines in the group to Automatic (Delayed Start). This gives the Enterprise Single Sign-On enough time to start before the BizTalk services try starting.

This behaviour has been acknowledged by Microsoft in the support article 942284 and in the BizTalk forums.

So if your company are running BizTalk 2009 on Windows Server 2008, or BizTalk 2009/2006R2 on Windows Vista you should update your installation, release, or deployment notes to include updating the services start up type.

 

Regards,

Thiago