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Project Cluster
Purpose
The purpose of this documentation is to provide tips on working with Windows Server 2008 in a cluster environment with DFS (distributed file system) and NLB (network load balancing).

General Notes:
1. If you need to migrate applications used by web applications from Windows Server 2003 (and those were previously in the System32 folder) the same applications should be placed in the SystemWOW64 folder on Windows Server 2008.
2. If you need HTTP Redirection and support for legacy ASP you will have to specifically install those components. Once completed you may have to restart IIS for the server to recognize the components.
3. When you add an identity to permissions on a file or folder on a website you should not need to manually do it on each server in the cluster as long as you are using a non machine specific account; if you do add a machine specific account then replication will automatically attempt to replicate that resulting in broken SAM data on other servers in the cluster.
4. You may need to alter (and/or add a rule) to anti-virus software you have running on each server in the cluster when developers perform updates to a website from a network path. What I've found is that developer changes will make it onto one server but anti-virus software on other servers in the cluster will hold up the replication (resulting in delayed replication or even no replication to all the servers in the cluster).
5. Since you are in a cluster enviornment, you may have found out you can share the applicationHost.config file between the servers in the cluster (by having it in a separate location). While this expedites maintaining various IIS and website settings for all of the sites, the cluster can go down if that file is unreachable. The way to prevent this from happening is to check out this documentation.

Creating a New Website:
In the cluster environment there are more things that you have to do in order to create a website and have that website recognized on the network as detailed here. In addition don't forget, depending on how your network runs, to update primary and secondary DNS as well as any NAT tables, firewalls and so forth for new IP addresses associated to the website. HTTP access usually requires port 80 to be open and HTTPS port 443.

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  1. Access the IIS Manager.

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  1. Create the new website application pool. If 32-bit based, be sure to select classic mode; if ASP, no managed code and the running identity of network service.

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  1. Create the new website. Associate it to the application pool you just created for the website and specify the internal IP address (binding) allocated to the new website.

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  1. Don't forget to specify the physical path to the website.

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  1. You're not going to get too far with the website until you add its new internal IP address (for HTTP and a separate IP address for HTTPS - if SSL is used) into the NLB (network load balancing) manager.

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  1. Select Cluster Properties.

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  1. Select Cluster IP Addresses.
  2. Enter the IP Address(s) and subnet mask.

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  1. When completed you should see the IP address added. Note: in most cases you won't have to repeat the process on each server in the cluster.


Writing to a Website:
In the cluster environment you probably have things set up so that developers can access websites on the cluster from a network path (as opposed to giving developers direct access to each webserver to build or maintain websites). If the developers or the group that they are not in is not added with appropriate permissions, the access denial will crop up.

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  1. Access denied message seen when a developer or the group the developer belongs to has not been added and given sufficient permissions.

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  1. Open share and access management.

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  1. Select the share that the website (or websites) are contained within and select properties.

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  1. Select the permissions tab and click on share permissions.
  2. Add the developer or group and choose the appropriate permissions needed for developers to do their work.


Servers in the Cluster and Network Connections:
Each server in the cluster needs to have two network connections associated to it. One of those is the normal network connection and the other is the network connection that is used to allow the servers to communicate with each other.

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  1. Access network connections on each server in the cluster.

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  1. The regular network connection is not using anything out of the ordinary.

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  1. No sharing is needed by the network connection.

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  1. The second connection, as you can see, is set up to handle network load balancing.

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  1. No sharing is needed by network load balancing.


The Core of Cluster Replication - DFS:
In the cluster environment replication of changes made to a website are handled with DFS (remember, installing a Windows application on one server in a cluster is not replicated...you have to manually install on each server). The process is a daisy-chain because a change will not always occur on a specific server and you have to specify how replication is handled for each server (you don't, however, have to logon to each server to do it).

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  1. Access the DFS manager.

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  1. Namespace Servers tab - General.

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  1. The replication group contains the servers in the cluster environment.

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  1. Under connections you can see that when one server receives a change it is to be replicated to the other server in the cluster.

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  1. Under Replicated Folders you can see that the physical folder (and contents of) are specified in order to have replicated.
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