ASP.NET Deployment to Multiple Web Servers

Question

I'm putting together my deployment plan for a major deployment next week (basically taking over a site).

I've never had to deploy to multiple web servers before.

• Do I need to copy the files to each web server, or is there a tool which will do this for me?

• I have to supply the IP address to some 3rd party vendors, which IP do I give them since there are four separate servers?

Answer 1

Please check this thread, hope this will help you: What method do you use to deploy ASP.Net applications to the wild?

Answer 2

It's worth saying that Microsoft have since released a couple of tools to help with this:

http://www.iis.net/download/webdeploy

http://www.iis.net/download/WebFarmFramework

Answer 3

I would of expected that there would be a load balancer which would spread the traffic between the servers. In which case you would give out the IP address of the external interface of the load balanacer.

For updates in this scenario I would typically take one server out of the loop for the load balancer then update that server, test it works ok then if you have 4 servers take another out and update/test that server. Then switch the load balancer so that the 2 updated servers are live and the other 2 are offline update/test those servers and then put them back into the loop so they're live and your update is complete with no downtime. Of course I'd typically do this during a period of low traffic where possible.

Whether you do this using some sort of automatic script or manually would depend on what systems you have in place and how often you would expect to make updates.