Overview 

This procedure describes at a high level how to configure a web farm to make DNN site scalable. This article aims to provide more information on the setup and the licensing structure required for the web farm configuration.

Prerequisites

• According to the DNN Corp. Software License and Service Agreement:

  • "1.4 “Instance” means a discrete copy of DNN Corp Software, as defined on or paired with an underlying web server site instance (e.g. Microsoft Internet Information Services – IIS, Apache, etc.), written to and operating with its own discrete and dedicated system memory."

  Essentially, for each instance (nodes) that you set up, you will need to activate a separate license. For example, if you had a web farm with two separate nodes, you will need to obtain two licenses and apply them separately by accessing each node and defining the node's name in the activation process.

Diagnosis

Each web server serves all configured websites. The number of webheads depicted is just an example.

Assume your DNS server (not in this diagram) is configured in the following way:

DNS server (111.111.1.10) with the following DNS records

(Please note this sample is assuming you have only one portal on your DNN Installation)

LOAD BALANCER (111.111.1.11) has a binding for www.mydomain.com
WEBSERVER1 (111.111.1.12) has a binding for webserver1.mydomain.com
WEBSERVER2 (111.111.1.13)has a binding for webserver2.mydomain.com
SQL SERVER (111.111.1.14) has a binding for dbserver.mydomain.com 
FILESERVER (111.111.1.15) has a binding for fileserver.mydomain.com 

Solution

For detailed information on setup and other potential scenarios, please review the attached PDF files for the web farm configuration guide for versions 9.1.1. and Version 4.1. Version 4.1 is for web farm configurations before Evoq 9 and 9.X.X is for configurations after Evoq 9.

1. Set up the load balancer to distribute traffic coming from www.mydomain.com into webserver1.mydomain.com and webserver2.mydomain.com

2. Use UNC for file sharing, please refer to page 8 in the Webfarm Configuration Guide 9.X.X,  using a file share ensures that files used by the DNN application are always the same (and in sync).

3. Install DNN on WEBSERVER1, once completed, you will have your DNN setup for a single server.

4. Install the WEBSERVER2 by adding a new Website to IIS and pointing it to UNC share and using the already configured DATABASE on DBSERVER.

5. Add the following aliases to your Portal.

www.mydomain.com 
webserver1.mydomain.com
webserver2.mydomain.com

Note that only www.mydomain.com should be exposed to the external world as webserver1.mydomain.com and webserver2.mydomain.com are only accessible internally.

Testing

With these steps completed, whenever you create a new page to that portal or add a file or asset, it will be saved without the server URI, allowing that all aliases can reach that page/resource just like a normal web request.