Search results matching tag 'IIS7 ARR'

ARR Helper Utility

JAltrichter — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:54:21 GMT

We have been using Anil Ruia's ARR Helper utility for a few months with no problems.
(http://blogs.iis.net/anilr/archive/2009/03/03/client-ip-not-logged-on-content-server-when-using-arr.aspx) It solved some annoying issues with response content confusion between HTTP and HTTPS due to SSL offload at the ARR.

My only complaint is that the address of the ARR that forwarded the message to the content node is lost.

Do you have any recomended guidance for preserving the ARR IP address on the content node IIS logs, such as an X-Forwarded-From? Alternately is their some easy way to determine the ARR server from the ARR_LOG_ID?

Thanks in advance,

Jim

Intercepting ARR client affinity cookie

Mark S. Rasmussen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:20:49 GMT

Hi,

We've got a Flash file upload feature in our application, using swfupload. There's a bug in the Flash player that causes it to always send the IE cookies, no matter the current browser - http://swfupload.org/forum/generaldiscussion/383.

This has caused us issues in the past since our session / forms authentication cookies were suddenly gone / errant if the user used Chrome/Firefox. I've previously fixed this issue by sending the cookie contents in the QueryString and then setting the cookie values in Application_BeginRequest so they have their correct values before ASP.NET wires up the session and authentcation.

I've run into a new variant of this bug, since we're now load balancing our app across three content servers using ARR. The previous fix still works, but the issue also affects the ARR client affinity cookie. Basically the user will be assigned to SERVER1 while browing in Firefox, but when the upload is made the client affinity cookie from IE will be sent, or a new will be assigned if the user has no client affinity cookie in IE. As a result, the user will receive the upload formula from SERVER1 but SERVER1-3 may receive the post - and that server has no knowledge of the user session.

I'm thinking of sending the ARR cookie value in the querystring as well. Then I'd implement an HttpModule that read the querystring value and set the cookie value in Application_BeginRequest. By installing this HttpModule on the IIS ARR load balancer and ordering it about the RequestRouting module, my theory is I can manipulate the cookie before ARR reads it. I've done some testing without luck, but I've not exhaustively tested it yet.

Any suggestions / comments on how to manipulate the ARR client affinity cookie before ARR reads it and redirects the request?

Thanks,
Mark S. Rasmussen

ARR help with SBS 2008

runningdiplomat — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:23:03 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to use ARR to route all of my incomming requests to a different server, but still use https with my sbs applications. Basically my setup is a SBS 2008 server running exchange and RWW. I want to be able to access all of the SBS applications, but have all other URL request forwarded to another server. How do I do this? I wasn't sure if I should mess around with SSL-offloading or whatnot. I am quite new to this, so if anyone could help thanks!!!

AAR routing / cookie / query string values

niro — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:17:04 GMT

Hi there, i have just "discovered" the AAR module and have some questions that im doubtful about.

I would like to migrate our current IIS 6 farm with NLB to the new IIS7 environment and are wondering if it is possible to achive the following. To note is that our servers are mainly servinig mobile phone content / WAP pages were we cannot trust that thet devices have cookie support or have it enabled.

1. I want to have Load balancing with server affinity.
I would like to have my server affinity set by either a cookie value or if not found, that the value for which server should handle the request can be found in the URL or / querystring. Is this possible, to write somekind of custom logic to find the server that should serve the request, e.g.

if(servername is found in cookie)
    send request to server in cookie value
else if(servername is in part of the URL)
    send request to server in part of the URL
else if(servername is found in the querystring)
    send request to server in the querystring
else
    send to server with least load at the moment.

2. I want to have Fail over if one of my server / application goes down.
If one of my servers in the cluster is down, or if the a web application is down that the server would fail over to a secondary server. Thus, it is not enough that IIS are testing if the server is up and running, i also need to have some kind of test that the web application is up and running, e.g. a ping to a well known page and test for HTTP status 200.

Best Regards
Niclas Rothman

Content server doesn't receive all requests

Mark S. Rasmussen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:28:50 GMT

Hi,

I've added a third content server to our current ARR cluster consisting of a dedicated ARR machine as well as two dedicated content servers behind it.

When I enable the new server, rather quickly the number of current requests grows up to the point where it doesn't receive any traffic anymore due to using lowest-current-requests load balancing.

If I run "appcmd list request" on the ARR machine, there's a number of hints of the outstanding requests. A lot of the requests are basically for static files (we have some code running on them as well, but it's very basic and usually runs in no time), but some are for normal app files as well. Usually we have an avg. response time of about 30ms, so the time values are certainly not usual.

REQUEST "190000408000f700" (url:GET /Modules/FlipMag.swf, time:1019061 msec, client:85.200.96.170, stage:ExecuteRequestHandler, module:ApplicationRequestRouting)
REQUEST "a00000c08000c6cb" (url:GET /Modules/FlipMag.swf, time:1016924 msec, client:80.63.228.160, stage:ExecuteRequestHandler, module:ApplicationRequestRouting)
REQUEST "8800004180003a2c" (url:GET /Modules/ClassicShopInterface.swf, time:1015270 msec, client:93.161.100.127, stage:ExecuteRequestHandler, module:ApplicationRequestRouting)
REQUEST "580000c080010d78" (url:GET /Modules/FlipMag.swf, time:983602 msec, client:93.178.137.134, stage:ExecuteRequestHandler, module:ApplicationRequestRouting)

I've enabled FREB on the ARR machine and sure enough I get a number of 502.3 errors. I've looked at one in particular:

Further into the log I can validate that the request is being routed to the newly added machine called CAESARS:

<EventData>
<Data Name="ContextId">{00000000-0000-0000-8DDA-008080010097}</Data>
<Data Name="RoutingReason">2</Data>
<Data Name="Server">CAESARS</Data>
<Data Name="State">0</Data>
<Data Name="TotalRequests">7889</Data>
<Data Name="CurrentRequests">17</Data>
<Data Name="BytesSent">5901518</Data>
<Data Name="BytesReceived">298776461</Data>
<Data Name="ResponseTime">135</Data>
</EventData>

However, if I review the current requests on CAESARS, there are no outstanding ones, and all is perfect in the logs. Also, CAESARS does not have any data on the above request in it's server wide IIS log.

It would seem that the ARR machine is routing the request to the content server but the content server doesn't receive it for some reason. Currently I've got 86 failed requests out of 15k served (it's running at a weight of 5% to avoid too much disturbance), so it's far from all requets that fail, but certainly too many - especially as they interfere with the load balancing algorithm.

I'm eager to hear any suggestions on what I can do to debug the issue. I've got FREB files available as well as IIS logs for the content servers. With a FREB file, I don't suppose an IIS log of the ARR machine makes sense.

EDIT: CAESARS is running Server 2008 R2 Web x64 while the others are Server 2008 Web x64's, but besides IIS7 vs 7.5 I don't think it should matter.

Thanks!

Uploads fail / timeout

Mark S. Rasmussen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:56:55 GMT

We allow our users to upload files to our system through a Flash uploading application. If I request the sites on the servers directly, everything works as it should. If I request the site through the ARR load balancer the uploads timeout after about 2 minutes. Downloads work as expected. This is my configuration:

No rewriting is being done and caching is disabled. I imagine the <protocol timeout> attribute defines the timeout for downloads. Is there anywhere I can set the timeout setting for incoming requests?

Thanks!
Mark S. Rasmussen

IIS Components for ARR Server Farm Routing

BSheaffer — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:22:25 GMT

I'm trying to test ARR to route to our test CRM4 server (as a potential base for a CRM4 server farm). The config is very simple: a single server with a fresh install of Windows 2008 R1 with SP2 running IIS and ARR; and an older server running Windows 2003 R2 running IIS and CRM4. (The CRM4 server has been tested and works fine).

I just can't get ARR to route ANYTHING to the server farm. I've followed the installation instructions (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/482/install-application-request-routing/) and the server farm walkthru (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/485/define-and-configure-an-application-request-routing-server-farm/), but ARR won't route to the farm (a netmon cap shows ARR doesn't even try to talk to the server in the farm). I've tried several things: just using the default rule that is automatically created; modifying the rule to pick pieces of the URL (rather than {R:0}); creating rules that hard set the url to http://{farm}/test.txt; even destroying everything and recreating.... Nothing works for farm routing.

However, redirection works fine: when I switch away from server farm routing to redirection, any rule I set up sends me the the destination server.

I couldn't find a list of required IIS components (I know the management service is required - ARR didn't install correctly without it; it didn't error - it just didn't show up in IIS). I don't know if there's something missing that server farm routing needs (and redirection doesn't). I've just rebuilt the ARR server so I can try fresh (I tried the v2 beta, and lost the gui to get to the rewrite rules).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks, -B

REMOTE_ADDR IP restriction and DFS

nelson_cerqueira — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:06:42 GMT

We install Microsoft Application Request Routing on a server and we are using it as a reverse proxy server.

All the url rewrite rules work, if we update the rule set with new rules everything still works but if we introduce or modify any rule that contains any IP condition and use REMOTE_ADDR as a variable the web server breaks and stop serving.

ie: <add input="{REMOTE_ADDR}" pattern="^(10.0.0.1|127.0.0.1)" />

We can only resume serving when we restart the web server.

This is very problematic as we use this reverse proxy as a production server and we cant be starting it whenever we want.

Can someone have any ideas for solving this? Many thanks.

Re: II7/ARR App Pool Idle Thread Timeout

JAltrichter — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:55:12 GMT

Thanks again for the follow-up.

Perhaps my case is a little different, because we are deploying our first IIS7 as an ARR so the learning curve has been two-fold. However, the part the I have found frustrating is not so much the how, but the why. There is a lot of 'click here' but not so much information about what’s happening when you do that.Also when searching for ARR some our the pre-release V1 docs blog posts pop up, which is a little confusing until you sort it out. For instance, your blog post from July 11^th2008 keeps coming up as one of the top resource for ‘ARR SSL’ configuration.Lastly, the topic for which I would have most wanted to see a 'click here' document, was only covered in a forum discussion: terminating multiple SSL's across single and multiple server farms. All in all, we have been able to keep this project moving and make a lot of headway in a short time-frame, but there have been a few wrong turns along the way.Jim

Re: II7/ARR App Pool Idle Thread Timeout

JAltrichter — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:54:24 GMT

Thanks again for the follow-up. Perhaps my case is a little different, because we are deploying our first IIS7 as an ARR so the learning curve has been two-fold. However, the part the I have found frustrating is not so much the how, but the why. There is a lot of 'click here' but not so much information about what’s happening when you do that.Also when searching for ARR some our the pre-release V1 docs blog posts pop up, which is a little confusing until you sort it out. For instance, your blog post from July 11^th2008 keeps coming up as one of the top resource for ‘ARR SSL’ configuration.Lastly, the topic for which I would have most wanted to see a 'click here' document, was only covered in a forum discussion: terminating multiple SSL's across single and multiple server farms. All in all, we have been able to keep this project moving and make a lot of headway in a short time-frame, but there have been a few wrong turns along the way.Jim