Microsoft Web farm framework (WFF) 2.0 officially released

Microsoft Web farm framework (WFF) 2.0 is developed by Microsoft and based on IIS 7. the small plug-in of X can help us easily implement the high performance and high availability of Web websites. It is used to provide and manage the system on the Web server group, thus making it possible to install and configure the software components of the cluster, in addition, it also supports ASP.. NET application. WFF can be integrated into the Server Load balancer system or configured to update servers in the group. In addition, you only need to stop and update one server at a certain time, instead of stopping the entire website. If you want to implement reverse proxy Based on IIS, using WFF is a good choice.

WFF includes the current web-layer load balancing. Common functions are as follows:

• Web farm Synchronization. Therefore, content can be synchronized on the Web farm Web server. Synchronization includes two parts: Application synchronization and platform synchronization.
  • Application Synchronization. Application synchronization can automatically or manually synchronize the content of web applications (files such as aspx, HTML, and config) between multiple servers in the Web farm to ensure that the content of web farm is internal, consistency of all web application content.
  • Platform Synchronization. The platform content required for synchronizing Web applications (such as. Net 4.0 runtime, PHP, and ASP. net mvc ). This ensures intra-web farm consistency at the platform level.
• Server Load balancer. There are multiple Web servers in the Web farm. Which server will process the requests? This requires the WFF load balancing policy. By default, WFF provides several policies, such as Weighted Round Robin and weighted total traffic. Based on these policies, requests can be allocated.
• Monitoring and Management. WFF allows you to view the running status of the current web farm server, including: whether the Web server is healthy, how many requests are received, and the total traffic of each server. You can also test whether a server is running. In addition, we can temporarily disable a server so that requests will not be routed to the disabled server.
• Cache. You can cache some of the content that has not changed much. There are two types of cache: memory cache and disk cache. Caching can reduce network traffic and improve response speed.

Strictly speaking, these functions are not implemented by a WFF tool, but are implemented by a series of WFF-centered tools, including Microsoft Web farm framework (WFF), Web deployment tools (wdt), URL rewrite, application request route (ARR), external cache and other gadgets. These tools can be integrated into the web farm and used separately. A little more tools, but installation is not too troublesome. The WFF installation package will automatically help you download and install the tools it depends on.

Scott Guthrie, vice president of Microsoft, previously wrote a detailed introduction to what WFF is and how to use it. When a server group needs to provide and manage servers, WFF can be used to execute all the tasks, effectively reducing the following manual steps:

• Install IIS, ASP. NET, and all core platform components on the server
• Install and configure custom IIS modules (such as urlrewite and Media Service)
• Configure the IIS application pool and site
• Enable SSL authentication for HTTPS endpoints
• Cross-Server replication and synchronization of appropriate sites/applications/Content
• The HTTP Server Load balancer system allocates loads to coordinate different Web servers.

Fwff allows operators (administrators) to install IIS, ASP. NET, and SSL authentication on servers, configure a new IIS application pool, and then copy the configuration to other systems. Application provision also works in this way. For example, an application is installed on a server, and WFF replicates the application across servers.

WFF 2.0 is now available in the official version. Scott Guthrie, vice president of Microsoft, wrote Microsoft Web farm Framework 2.0, introducing the new features of the official version:

• Workflow BuilderCan be used to define and schedule custom tasks that can be run on all servers in the farm. the tasks can be scheduled to run periodically or can be started manually by an administrator. an example of such task cocould be a msdeploy command to partially sync web site content.
• Windows credential storeSupport enables you to store the Administrator credentials used for server provisioning in a secure windows credential store. This enables an added layer of security when dealing with credentials with the Web farm framework.
• Third party load balancers supportVia web farm framework extensibility. It is now possible to configure the Web farm framework to integrate with Hardware load balancers instead of relying on the (free) Iis Application Request Routing module.
• Improved support for advanced msdeploy operations. More msdeploy features can now be used with the Web farm framework for advanced deployment scenarios.
• Improved support for syncing large amount of Files. Several issues related to syncing large amounts of files stored SS web farm nodes have been fixed between the beta and today's release.

Links to related articles:

• Introducing the Microsoft Web farm framework
• Download the Web farm framework V2 release
• Read the Web farm Framework 2.0 documentation
• Web farm Framework 2.0-Work Flow builder & extensibility