Scalable .NET?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dean J Garrett
  • Start date Start date
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Dean J Garrett

Hello,

We're beginning to build a new .NET application that must be very scalable,
i.e. to address future load requirements, we'd like to be able to simply add
additional web servers. How do you do that in .NET? How do you maintain
state across multiple servers? Does anyone know of a White Paper or other
article that describes such architecture?

Thanks!
 
Since this post, I was reviewing MS Application Center which seems to have
everything we need to dynamically introduce new servers to the web farm
as-needed. Our application will be pure .NET with SQL Server back-end. Does
anyone have experience with App Center? Does it work? Does it run on one
central server? Is it expensive?

Thanks!
 
Hi Dean,

Dean J Garrett said:
Since this post, I was reviewing MS Application Center which seems to have
everything we need to dynamically introduce new servers to the web farm
as-needed. Our application will be pure .NET with SQL Server back-end. Does
anyone have experience with App Center? Does it work? Does it run on one
central server? Is it expensive?
Click to expand...

AC is an application management solution, not just a load balancing
solution. It can deploy, replicate and monitor COM+ and ASP-based apps.

My experience with AC is mostly with WinDNA-type distributed apps. I've
written apps that run on AC that are .NET only, but I was using it as a
simple clustering solution, which is probably overkill since Windows Server
2003 ships with a good cluster solution as well.

Whatever you go with, remember this: *do not use sessions*. Sessions
absolutely kill clustering schemes because you have to enable affinity and
that limits the agility of the load balancing system. All things being equal
(i.e., good overall app design), as long as you avoid sessions you'll have a
happy clustering experience =)
 
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