Significance of IIS Web server for Virtualization

Web servers may be a good candidate for virtualization, but like any other server virtualization project, you should not blindly want to virtualize your IIS server. Before moving forward with the virtualization Internet Information Service (IIS), you should have a lot of considerations. Let's take a look at what to consider.

Topic recommendation: "lecture hall" of IIS service"

Virtual Server Layout

The primary consideration for host servers is cluster IIS and available hardware resources. Security is also among the most important issues. As far as I know, no one has pointed out how to execute supervision programs to escape attacks, but because IIS is a network-oriented application, and your IIS server is directly connected to the Internet, therefore, it seems reasonable to develop such attacks.

If you want to protect your enterprise from potential escape attacks, you should consider placing the IIS server on a virtual host that is only used to host other network-oriented servers. If the attack is escaped, the attacker can only access the servers in the surrounding network, but not the infrastructure servers in the backbone network.

Hardware resource consumption

A basic concern for virtual environments is usually the allocation of hardware resources. You need to ensure that your virtualization host can provide sufficient hardware resources to the IIS server without losing the necessary resources of the regulatory program or other virtual servers. In this case, we recommend that you run the performance monitor on an existing Web server. In this way, you can understand what hardware resources are currently used. Once the server is virtualized, your expectations for the resources to be allocated will be more realistic.

In any virtual server environment, it is important to limit the consumption of hardware resources by step. This not only improves performance, but also increases the Virtual Machine density, which increases the ROI for your host servers. With IIS, you can also do other things to help limit resource consumption.

One of the options is to strengthen your Web server. IIS does not require you to use a separate server for each cluster site. Each website requires a unique URL and a unique IP address, but with IIS, you can set multiple websites on a single server.

In general, it is better to strengthen the website on a single server than to use a separate server for each website. By using a single server, you will not be charged for running copies of multiple Windows operating systems.

If you decide to strengthen the website on a single server, creating a separate application pool for each site is a good idea. In this way, if a website has a problem, you do not have to worry about it causing other websites on the server to become invalid.

Another way you can save resources is to use the core server device of the operating system. Compared with a full range of Windows systems, because the core system of the server is much smaller, it may be safer and better executed.

Because the Server Core lacks the GUI and management tools that administrators are accustomed to using, many administrators are reluctant to use Server Core and Windows Server 2008 together. However, if Server Core has been pre-installed at the beginning, you can manage it with a graphical tool on another Server. This means that it is possible to manage IIS in the same way as you are familiar.

Fault Tolerance and load balancing

When you plan to virtualize your IIS server, it is necessary to consider fault tolerance and load balancing. If you have deployed IIS in a cluster, you can still Virtualize your IIS network server, but you must be sure not to place each virtualized cluster node on the same host server. Otherwise, the host server becomes a single point of failure.

Therefore, even if you do not operate IIS in the Cluster Environment in advance, it is also a good idea to cluster your managed servers. If you are running Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware, it is also possible to create a server-level fault-tolerant cluster. This prevents the host server from becoming a single point of failure, and allows you to remove the host server for maintenance without losing the virtual server in the process.

Network bandwidth considerations

The last point to consider is network bandwidth. Depending on the number of virtual machines on your host server, it is unlikely to assign an independent NIC to each independent virtual machine. Similarly, you must consider whether your existing network hardware can fully handle the expected traffic.

You should also remember that in a virtual server environment, it is sometimes necessary to allocate some physical network adapters to the virtualization infrastructure. For example, you may have to assign a network adapter to the host operating system. If you are running the host server as a part of the cluster, you must assign one or two network adapters to the Service Cluster Based on your configuration ).

It is also feasible to allocate multiple adapters to a single server to improve security and performance. For example, you may want to use an adapter for inbound requests from the Internet, and use another adapter to connect to an SQL Server instance on a private network.

As you can see, considering security, performance, and resource allocation, IIS can work well in a virtual server environment as long as you deploy IIS in this way.