re:
!> Other articles on technet seem to link NLB and a Web Farm quite tightly
ASP.NET and IIS are quite tightly tied. They aren't the same, though.
Do you see the analogy ?
That article you cite refers to the single log-on feature needed in
a Web farm environment, *when you are using Active Directory*.
That's why they talk about the *SupplierAD* sample site.
That's a very specific requirement for Commerce Server.
To sum up the argument, a *web farm* is composed of a number of different servers
which serve a number of applications by insuring that requests are properly identified
as belonging to the same application(s).
Otoh, Network Load Balancing_NLB is a network driver that *distributes the load*
for networked client/server applications across multiple cluster servers.
Network Load Balancing works by distributing client requests across a set of servers.
Network Load Balancing can be used to scale applications
that manage session state spanning multiple connections.
When its client affinity parameter setting is enabled, Network Load Balancing
directs all TCP connections from one client IP address to the same cluster host.
I.O.W., NLB is like a traffic cop, and Web farms are like a security cop that checks IDs, etc.
re:
!> I've never heard of the distinction between a web cluster
!> (homogenous servers) and a web farm (hetrogenous servers) before now.
The difference exists. Try asking Dino Esposito, if you don't believe me.
I fully trust his judgment regarding ASP.NET architecture.
Juan T. Llibre, asp.net MVP
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