Documentation for load balancing the Cireson Portal?

Christian_Fails

Does anyone know if Cireson has documentation for setting up a load balanced environment?  Or could anyone offer up advice?  We have a 2nd portal server spun up and it has not been load balanced.  I installed the Cireson Portal on it.  I installed the Cache Builder, Database, and Website under the Advanced Install Options.  The reason I'm asking is that we encountered an issue today that was caused by the Cache Builder service running on the 2nd portal server. From what I've been reading that service should not have been running, but I didn't know that.    

Adam_Dzyacky

There isn't any Cireson specific documentation on load balancing as it could be done with any number of load balancers/configurations. Never the less, here's the general idea with an example configuration architecture -

3 scsm mgmt servers (the 1 wf server and the 2 mgmt servers)

• The WF server runs core SCSM workflows and the Cireson Cache Builder service
• The other two run SCSM mgmt server functionality along with IIS roles to host the Cireson Portal. The cache builder can optionally be installed on these but they should not be running.

What's important about the two IIS servers is they both host the portal on the same port. Next, in your DNS you'll need to create an A Name record (this will allow you to create a friendly name to frontend your portal rather than the actual name of the server hosting it). The IP address on this new A NAME you'll use is the IP of your load balancer. It's then within your load balancer you can redirect requests from that A NAME/IP to either of your management servers and whatever port the portal is hosted on respectively.

Again, this is the general idea with an example configuration.

Joe_Burrows

Christian_Fails said:

Thanks for your response Adam. 

I already have one web server running the portal.  I ran the portal install on our 2nd web server with Install Database selected and it seemed to cause some tables to be corrupt.  When installing the portal on a 2nd web server, for load balancing purposes, should I select Install Database or not? 

Assuming your pointing at the same ServiceManagement database as your 1st web-server you dont need to select install database again on your 2nd webserver - but it does not matter either way it will run the same DAC again.

The main thing to avoid issues, like Adam mentions above is to not have two cachebuilders running at the same time on both web servers. Have it running on one server with recovery task to start on the second server in the event of failure.

Adam_Dzyacky

There isn't any Cireson specific documentation on load balancing as it could be done with any number of load balancers/configurations. Never the less, here's the general idea with an example configuration architecture -

3 scsm mgmt servers (the 1 wf server and the 2 mgmt servers)

• The WF server runs core SCSM workflows and the Cireson Cache Builder service
• The other two run SCSM mgmt server functionality along with IIS roles to host the Cireson Portal. The cache builder can optionally be installed on these but they should not be running.

What's important about the two IIS servers is they both host the portal on the same port. Next, in your DNS you'll need to create an A Name record (this will allow you to create a friendly name to frontend your portal rather than the actual name of the server hosting it). The IP address on this new A NAME you'll use is the IP of your load balancer. It's then within your load balancer you can redirect requests from that A NAME/IP to either of your management servers and whatever port the portal is hosted on respectively.

Again, this is the general idea with an example configuration.

Christian_Fails

Thanks for your response Adam. 

I already have one web server running the portal.  I ran the portal install on our 2nd web server with Install Database selected and it seemed to cause some tables to be corrupt.  When installing the portal on a 2nd web server, for load balancing purposes, should I select Install Database or not? 

Joe_Burrows

Christian_Fails said:

Thanks for your response Adam. 

I already have one web server running the portal.  I ran the portal install on our 2nd web server with Install Database selected and it seemed to cause some tables to be corrupt.  When installing the portal on a 2nd web server, for load balancing purposes, should I select Install Database or not? 

Assuming your pointing at the same ServiceManagement database as your 1st web-server you dont need to select install database again on your 2nd webserver - but it does not matter either way it will run the same DAC again.

The main thing to avoid issues, like Adam mentions above is to not have two cachebuilders running at the same time on both web servers. Have it running on one server with recovery task to start on the second server in the event of failure.

Christian_Fails

Thanks for your input Joe.  They will be pointing at the same ServiceManagement database.

Gerardo_Ruiz

https://community.cireson.com/discussion/comment/11373#Comment_11373

Hi, Christian, did it work? I'm on the same situation and trying to install the same way