Last month we released a beta of the Microsoft Web Farm Framework. The Microsoft Web Farm Framework is a free product we are shipping that enables you to easily provision and mange a farm of web servers. It enables you to automate the installation and configuration of platform components across the server farm, and enables you to automatically synchronize and deploy ASP.NET applications across them. It also supports integration with load balancers - and enables you to automate updates across your servers so that your site/application is never down or unavailable to customers (it can automatically pull servers one-at-a-time out of the load balancer rotation, update them, and then inject them back into rotation).
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework is a 1 MB download, and can be installed on IIS 7 and above. It is available for free. You can download the first preview of this beta here: x86 / x64.
Why Is the Web Farm Framework Useful?
Running a web farm requires you to provision and manage multiple servers. Running a web farm involves (among other things):
Installing IIS, ASP.NET and all of the core platform components on the servers
Installing and configuring custom IIS modules (UrlRewite, Media Services, etc)
Configuring IIS Application Pools and Sites
Setting up SSL certificates for things like HTTPs endpoints
Copying and synchronizing the appropriate sites/applications/content across the various boxes
Coordinating the various web servers with a HTTP load balancer to distribute load
Administrators and developers managing a web farm today often perform a lot of manual steps to do the above (which is error prone and dangerous), or write a lot of custom scripts to automate it (which is time consuming and hard). Adding new servers or making configuring or application changes can often be painful and time-consuming.
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework makes this process much easier, and enables you to manage web farms in a completely automated way. Best of all, it is really easy to setup and use.
Using Web Farm Framework to Provision and Scale a Web Farm
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework enables you to easily define a “Server Farm” that you can add any number of servers into. Servers participating in the “Server Farm” will then be automatically updated, provisioned and managed by the Web Farm Framework.
What this means is that you can install IIS (including modules like UrlRewrite, Media Services, etc), ASP.NET, and custom SSL certificates once on a primary server – and then the Web Farm Framework will automatically replicate and provision the exact same configuration across all of the other web servers in the farm (no manual or additional steps required).
Read more: ScottGu's Blog
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework is a 1 MB download, and can be installed on IIS 7 and above. It is available for free. You can download the first preview of this beta here: x86 / x64.
Why Is the Web Farm Framework Useful?
Running a web farm requires you to provision and manage multiple servers. Running a web farm involves (among other things):
Installing IIS, ASP.NET and all of the core platform components on the servers
Installing and configuring custom IIS modules (UrlRewite, Media Services, etc)
Configuring IIS Application Pools and Sites
Setting up SSL certificates for things like HTTPs endpoints
Copying and synchronizing the appropriate sites/applications/content across the various boxes
Coordinating the various web servers with a HTTP load balancer to distribute load
Administrators and developers managing a web farm today often perform a lot of manual steps to do the above (which is error prone and dangerous), or write a lot of custom scripts to automate it (which is time consuming and hard). Adding new servers or making configuring or application changes can often be painful and time-consuming.
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework makes this process much easier, and enables you to manage web farms in a completely automated way. Best of all, it is really easy to setup and use.
Using Web Farm Framework to Provision and Scale a Web Farm
The Microsoft Web Farm Framework enables you to easily define a “Server Farm” that you can add any number of servers into. Servers participating in the “Server Farm” will then be automatically updated, provisioned and managed by the Web Farm Framework.
What this means is that you can install IIS (including modules like UrlRewrite, Media Services, etc), ASP.NET, and custom SSL certificates once on a primary server – and then the Web Farm Framework will automatically replicate and provision the exact same configuration across all of the other web servers in the farm (no manual or additional steps required).
Read more: ScottGu's Blog