Load Balancing a .NET WebFarm

[Christopher D. Wiederspan]

I'm wondering if anybody could give me some tips on a good webfarm
load-balancing solution for an ASP.NET application. Here's the rundown:
we've got 3 identical servers that each have identical content. Currently,
we're using dns round-robin to load-balance traffic across the servers. I
won't go into all of the issues that we've encountered doing it this way,
but there are many. We also have the problem of keeping the content
synchronized across all servers. This is not a big deal with only the 3
servers, but what happens when we have 10 servers?

I'm wondering if anybody has a better all-around solution in mind? We've
looked into using DFS to synchronize content, but that's slightly messy to
setup, especially for things like the machine.config files. Our firewall
also does some very rudimentary load-balancing, but that too is ugly. I know
that Application Center 2000 does all of these things, but is it worth the
$2K (or whatever it costs) per machine? I've also looked into the $30K
F5-BigIP type solutions, but that's a bit out of our budget, and it doesn't
address the content issue as I understand it. Are there any other solutions
that somebody could recommend?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[MSFT]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for the post. I am working on this issue and trying to find
proper resource to assist you on this issue. I will update you as soon as
posible.

Luke
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

 

[Stefan Schachner[MSFT]]

Hey Chris,
Thank you for your question.. When you start comparing load balancing
solutions you will need to determine whether you are looking for a hardware
solution or a software solution..The prices can vary based on the solution
you are looking for... Application Center will certainly do what you are
looking for... For pricing on application center please visit

http://www.microsoft.com/applicationcenter/howtobuy/licenses.asp

Here are some other alternatives ...
Windows 2003 comes with NLB (Network Load Balance) Not to mention the
stability of Windows 2003 as well as some of the application monitoring
tools that come with Application Center also come with Windows 2003... For
more information

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechn
ol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/deployguide/sdcbd_nlb_zwmj.asp


I also did a search in google (www.google.com) for ("Load Balancing" ".Net
applications")and it returned some additional load balancing devices that
may be a better fit for your company...

I hope this information was helpful,

Thank you for posting to the MSDN managed newsgroups,
Stefan B. Schachner MCSE MCP MCP +I
Community Tech Lead

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