I understand WFF controller becomes single point of failure of entire webfarm provisioning and operation. The whole idea of WFF is to manage web farms and one of the reason you have web farm is to provide redundancy in case of server failures. So how does WFF
fit into this scenario being single point of failure. What are the options for making sure Controller is easily recoverable in case of failure? There is no "export/import" or "backup controller" functions.
I believe the prescribed approach for high availability WFF is using some sort of load balancer (like NLB) to have redundant hardware hosting the controller setup.
I believe the prescribed approach for high availability WFF is using some sort of load balancer (like NLB) to have redundant hardware hosting the controller setup.
Problem is that WFF can not be load balanced. All configuration is local to server where controller is located.
WFF configuration is in the applicationHost.config. I haven't tried it, so I'm not positive, but I'm reasonably certain you can get around that by using
Shared Configuration. You may need to configure your load balancing setup to be active/passive so the controllers don't fight with each other to sync.
Interesting thought, I wonder if the two WFF controllers be added to a Web Farm, so that they would keep their configuration in sync.
Password in apphost.config are encrypted with I assume device key, so not sure if it'll work in shared configuration. Also not sure if WFF stores operational data outside of app.config which will mess with the operation. There is no clear documentation how
to deal with controller failure in WFF.
I have done a fair bit of tampering with the WFF appHost.config settings and I
think everything is stored there, but I wouldn't swear to you.
I'm absolutely in agreement that the documentation on WFF is, to be kind, lacking. Especially for an extension targeted at larger web hosting scenarios, I'm very surprised at the lack of documentation.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. Since WFF is primarily built with other technologies, you can often find more/different/better documentation if you look at those tools. For example, if you're having trouble with syncing or stuff like skip directives, go looking
in the MSDeploy docs. If you have trouble with the controller routing requests, try looking in ARR.
I just ran into this same question. I'm testing out an environment so I'll let you know if IIS shared configuration will allow for a redundant controller configuration.
artisticchee...
74 Posts
WFF is high availability scenario
Aug 24, 2011 07:01 PM|LINK
jcgillespie
23 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 01, 2011 03:27 PM|LINK
I believe the prescribed approach for high availability WFF is using some sort of load balancer (like NLB) to have redundant hardware hosting the controller setup.
artisticchee...
74 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 01, 2011 03:49 PM|LINK
jcgillespie
23 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 01, 2011 03:59 PM|LINK
WFF configuration is in the applicationHost.config. I haven't tried it, so I'm not positive, but I'm reasonably certain you can get around that by using Shared Configuration. You may need to configure your load balancing setup to be active/passive so the controllers don't fight with each other to sync.
Interesting thought, I wonder if the two WFF controllers be added to a Web Farm, so that they would keep their configuration in sync.
artisticchee...
74 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 01, 2011 04:02 PM|LINK
jcgillespie
23 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 01, 2011 04:29 PM|LINK
Shared configuration will definitely handle the encryption keys. (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/264/shared-configuration/#02).
I have done a fair bit of tampering with the WFF appHost.config settings and I think everything is stored there, but I wouldn't swear to you.
I'm absolutely in agreement that the documentation on WFF is, to be kind, lacking. Especially for an extension targeted at larger web hosting scenarios, I'm very surprised at the lack of documentation.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. Since WFF is primarily built with other technologies, you can often find more/different/better documentation if you look at those tools. For example, if you're having trouble with syncing or stuff like skip directives, go looking in the MSDeploy docs. If you have trouble with the controller routing requests, try looking in ARR.
owjeff
680 Posts
Re: WFF is high availability scenario
Sep 13, 2011 07:29 PM|LINK
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