Can’t find Service Bus Beta 1.0 NuGet Package

Service Bus 1.0 Beta First Tutorial link talks about adding a library reference to a NuGet Package “Service Bus 1.0 Beta (for Windows Server)”. However when I got to adding the library reference the said NuGet package wouldn’t show up in the list of available references. Panic! Not Yet. What the NuGet Package essentially does is it downloads Microsoft.ServiceBus assembly to the project folder and adds it as a project reference and it also adds a reference to System.ServiceModel.dll and System.Runtime.Serialization.dll from the system folders.  Now the same can be done by:

1) Add a project reference to;

• Microsoft.ServiceBus.dll from <Root Folder> :\Program Files\Windows Azure Service Bus\1.0\
• System.ServiceModel.dll from <Root Folder>:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\
• System.Runtime.Serialization.dll from <Root Folder>:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\

Note that adding references via. NuGet gives you the latest build version for Microsoft.ServiceBus. But for now what the heck!

2) For the more paranoid ones wanting to go the NuGet way and get the latest version;

• In Visual Studio go to Tools–>Library Package Manager–>Package Manager Console (if you don’t have this option install NuGet from here).
• In the Package Manager Console type “Get-Package -Filter “ServiceBus.v1_0″ -ListAvailable”. This will display the latest Service Bus package.
• Next in the Package Manager Console type “Install-Package ServiceBus.v1_0” and voila the references are added.

Lock and Load!

VeeN

Remove-SbFarm missing!

Having configured my Service Bus, I realised that I should have used a different service account. Doh! Time to roll back the configuration and start from scratch.  So this is how it went:

1) Remove the namespace created for the Service Bus Host; Used Remove-SbNamespace -Name and the namespace is gone.

2) Next, remove my machine from the Service Bus farm; Used Remove-SbHost and my server is de-registered from the SB Farm. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

3) Next was to remove the Service Bus farm; so thought will run Remove-SbFarm. Hang on a minute! There is no such thing as Remove-SbFarm. So I tried to re-configure my farm but my PowerShell console kept shouting “The database (SbManagementDB) located at SQL Server (.) is already configured.”

Right! Let me try the conventional UnInstall–> ReStart–>ReInstall–>ReStart routine on the Service Bus to get rid of this problem. But as soon as I got to configuring the service bus the same message popped up again. So in-spite of doing a complete ReInstall the Service Bus still says its configured. Spooky! Well, not really. A bit of probing and I realised that the problem is with these databases:

These databases are not deleted even if the product is UnInstalled. I manually deleted these databases and tried configuring the Service Bus again, voila, this time it worked like a charm. So let me re-word Step (3) as:

3) Next was to remove the Service Bus farm;  login to your SQL box and manually delete SbGatewayDatabase, SbManagementDB and ServiceBusDefaultContainer. Fire away!

VeeN

Windows Service Bus- Installation and Configuration

Microsoft recently released the beta of Service Bus 1.0 for Windows Server. What this essentially means is that it moves the integration capabilities of Windows Azure, with its highly scalable pub-sub mechanism, from the cloud to on-premise.

For installing Service bus the system requirements are Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher, SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1, IIS 7.5 (comes along- with Windows Server 2008 R2 installation) , PowerShell 3.0 and .NET 4.5 (no need to install separately as it is bundled along-with Service Bus installation). Service Bus 1.0 Beta is available for download from here.

The installation begins with the following welcome screen.

The installer then checks for the pre-requisites and for my machine it identified the following pre-requisites missing:

Once accepted, the installation completes after a machine re-start:

The installation has created a new service called “Windows Fabric Host Service”:

Installation done! So are we ready to firing away on the Service Bus? Well not yet! The next step is configuring the service bus for our use. For that you need to open the “Service Bus PowerShell” console which can be found at Start–> All Programs –> Windows Azure Service Bus 1.0 –> Service Bus PowerShell. Let the configuration begin:

Step 1) Create a Service Bus Farm

$SBCertKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force -String ;

New-SBFarm -FarmMgmtDBConnectionString ‘Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True’ -PortRangeStart 9000 -TcpPort 9354 -RunAsName ” -AdminGroup ‘BUILTIN\Administrators’ -GatewayDBConnectionString ‘Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=SbGatewayDatabase;Integrated Security=True’ -CertAutoGenerationKey $SBCertKey -ContainerDBConnectionString ‘Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=ServiceBusDefaultContainer;Integrated Security=True’;

Either you copy paste each of the statements individually to the PowerShell console or save the text with .ps1 extension (i.e. PowerShell script) and execute the script. A simpler version of the script is available here but the above statements give you more control over the configuration.

You get the following text to confirm the creation of our SB Farm:

and you can verify the creation of the following databases as well:

Step 2) Add your machine to the farm created in Step (1) i.e. add a SB Host:

$SBCertKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force -String ;
$SBRunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force -String ;
Add-SBHost -FarmMgmtDBConnectionString ‘Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True’ -RunAsPassword $SBRunAsPassword -CertAutoGenerationKey $SBCertKey;

This will add your server to the Farm and also install the following services on your machine:

Am I ready now! Nope, not yet. One last thing and you are dressed for the party.

Step 3) Create a namespace; You will need a namespace for your Service Bus host:

New-SBNamespace –Name –ManageUsers

Right then, all installed and configured. Time to play!

VeeN