Can you create a BizTalk server group by cloning the original server?

Question

Currently my Biztalk environment consists of one server.

_{Getting my application setup on that environment is no walk through a flowery field on a sunny day. It's more like using an out house in post-nuclear-apocalypse Siberia on a winter night during a bad snow storm and there are starving radioactive tigers.}

I'd like to add a second server to reduce the load on the existing server. What do you think would be the easiest way to do that? Clone the existing server and make adjustments where needed or go through the whole install from scratch?

Here everyone is in agreement that you can't just clone a BizTalk server but they don't talk about doing so in the context of setting up a multi-server environment. Here and here they say it's possible but even people who have done it many times run into difficulties.

Am I naive to think I can just clone the server, maybe change a product key ¯_(ツ)_/¯, setup a group , point both servers to that group, make a few changes to the cloned server where it was hard-coded to localhost or whatever, and then fire it up. Right? Or will there be less problems overall if I do a fresh install of BizTalk and my application?

• currently the server I'm working with has the database on the same server but I want to do the same thing in prod where BizTalk and the database are on different servers.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Cloning the existing server is not the best option for you. I advice to install BizTalk on your new server and join the existing BizTalk group.This way, your new server will inherit from the existing conf/applications. Y'll need to only install applications MSIs and GAC external assemblies.