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Thread: About ARR load balancing

Last post 06-18-2009 10:46 AM by wonyoo. 2 replies.

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  • 06-18-2009, 1:27 AM

    • _chill
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    • Joined on 06-18-2009, 5:11 AM
    • Posts 1

    About ARR load balancing

    Hi all,

    I'm new here, and my project wanna load balancing the web server with two IBM x3650 that using Windows NLB. With the new IIS7, my advisor told me I can using the ARR technology to balancing the network load, but I found that just only rewirte the URL to anonter content server, its cannot balancing the real server load. I have some question about ARR.

    1. ARR just rewrite the URL then forward to another content server, isnt right?

    2.If ARR server can provding IIS 7 service as possible as a Web farm server?

    3.Our environment just have 2 IBM x3650 as the front web server, so I think I can install the ARR on those two servers then build a server farm, whatever one server is crashed, another server will always providing service?

    4.ARR is a new load balancing technology, just like Windows NLB, that can load balancing the server load?

     

    forgive my bad english skill, thanks!

    Joshua.

  • 06-18-2009, 3:27 AM In reply to

    Re: About ARR load balancing

    Have you seen the following link: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/511/achieving-high-availability-and-scalability---arr-and-nlb/ ? It describes quite well the ARR and NLB relationship

    Jaroslav Dunajsky (MSFT, IIS)
  • 06-18-2009, 10:46 AM In reply to

    • wonyoo
    • Top 50 Contributor
    • Joined on 12-15-2007, 1:46 PM
    • Posts 125

    Re: About ARR load balancing

    Hi Joshua

    ARR and NLB can be complementary, but they are not the same technology.  Not sure if you had a chance to walk through some of the documents, but for your use case, it seems like the following may be most useful: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/486/http-load-balancing-using-application-request-routing/.

    Unlike NLB, ARR is proxy based.  So in your environment, you will want to have a 3rd machine as an ARR server which in turn load balances to the two servers that you already have in your environment.  Another key difference is that NLB does its routing at layer 3 and 4 while ARR does its routing at layer 7 - so all of the headers and server variables are available to you to write more application specific rules to enable additional scenarios (as shown in http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/487/pilot-program-management-using-application-request-routing/)

    To answer your specific questions:

    1.  ARR works with URL rewrite for inspecting the incoming HTTP requests, but it's not just a proxy.  It does manage a server farm (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/485/define-and-configure-an-application-request-routing-server-farm/) and comes with load balance alogirhtms, health monitoring, affinity, etc.

    2. Not sure if I fully understand your question, but hopefully my statement above on managing the server farm provides more information.

    3. This is one of the differences that I've described above.  NLB is a "peer-to-peer" technology where you would create one VIP between the two machines and the NLB roles are enabled directly on those two machines.  For ARR, it is proxy based and you will want to have another server in front of the "server farm".

    4. ARR is an IIS Extension for IIS7/IIS7.5 (R2) that is designed to provide high availability and scalability.  You can find more information on ARR at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/489/using-the-application-request-routing-module/.

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