Iis – Web Farm Framework – Missing IIS features

iisload balancingweb-farm

I'm trying to install a web farm using Microsoft's Web Farm Framework 2.2. The server is Windows 2008 R2 with IIS 7.5.

I followed a tutorial. Installed WFF from Web Platform Installer. However, I'm missing some key features in the "Server Farm" panel in IIS.

This is how my setup looks like (image)

This is how my setup looks like

However, just like in the tutorial,

enter image description here

I want it like this

How can I enable ALL the things, like Load Balancer, Health Test, Server Affinity etc? Thanks. The tutorial I used was this: weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/08/introducing-the-microsoft-web-farm-framework.aspx

Best Answer

That's Application Request Routing. Install it as well.

As a note, you might need to nuke your farm configuration if there are problems layering it atop the existing installation (which I assume is on a controller).

App Request Routing is the proxying module that integrates with Web Farm Framework, which is the Server Farming and app and platform provisioning module (as of WFF 2.0; WFF 1.0 was literally just "these servers exist in a farm, are online/offline, and here are their IPs").

ARR installs WFF 1.0 if you just install it; WFF doesn't install ARR if you install it, but ARR integrates nicely on a WFF Controller.

Related Solutions

Why does Web Farm Framework keep marking the WFE’s as Unhealthy

I think I found the answer. I you recycle the ARR application pool you get the 502.4 error when trying to access the secondary servers through the WFF controller (which is the http load balancer). I set the Idle time-out to 0 minutes to disable application pool recycling.

From http://forums.iis.net/t/1158399.aspx

"Functionally speaking, this value has no impact on how ARR works. The idle time-out is designed to bring down the worker process in order to free up more memory. (The default value is 20 min. So for example, if you have multiple sites/applications in multiple applications pools, and if there has been no activity on one of them, IIS will bring down the worker process - so that other processes/etc can consume the resource on the machine.)

Since ARR is proxying the all requests to the content/application servers behind it, we recommend that the worker process is running all the time. (That said, if there is a constant flow traffic, then the worker process would be running all the time, irrespective of this value. ie. It won't be idle for 20 min.)"

Issue provisioning IIS 7.5 server using Web Farm Framework 2

I managed to get around the issue by updating the ignore list in c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\conf\applicationHost.config on the web farm controller. I updated the web farm section to skip the provision of the appPool and logFiles folders, this seems to have fixed the issue for me.

<webFarm>
    <applicationProvision offlineWhileSync="true" syncWebServerFromPrimary="true" periodicSync="00:00:30">
        <clear />
        <skipDirectives>                   
            <skip name="appPools" skipDirective="objectName=dirPath,absolutePath=.*appPools.*" />
            <skip name="logFiles" skipDirective="objectName=dirPath,absolutePath=.*LogFiles.*" />
        </skipDirectives>
    </applicationProvision>
</webFarm>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Why does Web Farm Framework keep marking the WFE’s as Unhealthy

Issue provisioning IIS 7.5 server using Web Farm Framework 2

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