BizTalk Deployment Framework

I've been using the BizTalk Deployment Framework in particular for highly available environments where there are 2 Receive hosts, 2 Send hosts and 2 Process hosts.  The 2 receive hosts are clustered which works well when you have orchestrations exposed as WCF web services because you can install the virtual directories on both servers and not have a single point of failure. 

The Deployment Framework allows you to deploy your BizTalk assemblies to the GAC and optionally to install them to the BizTalk management database.  So in this 6 server arrangement you select to deploy to the BizTalk management database on one of the servers and deploy just the assemblies to the GAC on the other 5.

Now the Deployment Framework provides the ability to install your virtual directories as part of the deployment but here is where you hit your first problem. It only does so when you select "deploy to management database" as true which means you only get them deployed onto one server.  And your deployment instructions need to be clear about which server you install the virtual directories on. 

I've deployed a lot of web services so I have experience in creating virtual directories and application pools.  The APPCMD is my best friend and can be called using

%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\APPCMD

So I started to create a Windows CMD file called CreateVDir.cmd.  And it occurred to me I can use the %COMPUTERNAME% to specify which server I want to execute commands on.

IF NOT "%COMPUTERNAME"=="%RECEIVEHOST1%" GOTO END
IF NOT "%COMPUTERNAME"=="%RECEIVEHOST2%" GOTO END

In this case I am passing RECEIVEHOST1 and RECEIVEHOST2 as parameters to the CreateVDir.cmd along with the Virtual Directory name, the physical path and the user name and password for the Application Pool account.  And the great thing is I can have these as environment settings in the SSO and pass them into CreateVDir.cmd as $(VDIR_UserName) $(ReceiveHost1) etc.

So I just need to create a Target in BTDFPROJ as
<Target AfterTargets="" Name="CustomDeployTarget">
<Exec command="..\CreateVdir.cmd <vdirname> <physpath>  $(VDIR_UserName)  $(VDIR_UserPass) $(ReceiveHost1)  $(ReceiveHost2)"/>
</Target><

I also need to create a CustomUndeployTarget which calls my DeleteVdir.cmd file and then I have all the control I need. I like this approach. I keep my BTDFPROJ file simple and I have CMD files that I can create and test independently of the deployment process.

Good old DOS commands!