Phases of a Performance Assessment

One of the primary goals of BizTalk Server is to provide maximum flexibility for accommodating as many processing scenarios as possible. Because of this great flexibility, one of the primary challenges facing developers of a BizTalk solution is to determine how to make best use of the features available in BizTalk Server to meet their business needs. This flexibility also poses a challenge when optimizing the performance of a BizTalk Server solution.

This section describes the methodology that should be used to optimize the performance of a BizTalk Server solution by engaging in a BizTalk Server performance assessment. A BizTalk Server performance assessment is used to maximize the performance of a particular BizTalk Server solution. In order to gain the maximum benefit from a BizTalk Server performance assessment, the performance assessment should be divided into the following five distinct steps/phases:

  1. Scope

  2. Plan

  3. Prepare

  4. Build lab

  5. Execute

    This topic describes each of these phases in greater detail.

    Phases of a performance assessment process
    Phases of a BizTalk Server performance assessment

In This Section

  • Phase 1: Scoping the Assessment - Describes the steps that should be followed when establishing the scope of the performance assessment.

  • Phase 2: Planning the Assessment – Describes how to create a solution milestones timeline. This is used as a master plan to clearly document when expected goals for the testing of the solution should be met.

  • Phase 3: Preparing for the Assessment – Describes how to provide a detailed architectural diagram of the solution and specific aspects of the hardware configuration used by the solution.

  • Phase 4: Building the Assessment Environment – Describes installation of hardware and applications according to the detailed design of the solution platform that was established previously.

  • Phase 5: Executing the Assessment – Provides information about generating performance data via automated load testing and how to detect and eliminate any bottlenecks in the solution.

See Also

BizTalk Server Performance Testing Methodology