Can .NET applications be load-balanced?

[billym]

Does anyone know if it is possible to build a scalable,
fault-tolerant middle tier by deploying .NET applications
on multiple servers?

If so, how is this done and are there coding issues that
must be adhered to? IOW, can it be handled by the
framework, COM+, MSCS, or hardware products such as Local
Director?

 

[Jeff Levinson [mcsd]]

Good question. The answer is absolutely.

There are several different issues that need to be
addressed. The first is, is it a web based or windows
based application? The second is, are you maintaining
application state?

Most scalable apps that I've build are remoting apps
using IIS to host the middle tier components. My
applications are stateless as all scalable apps should be
so this eliminates issues with how to store user state or
session information.

In order to scale the applications you can use a standard
web load balancer (such as application center server or a
hardware product like bigfoot). This provides both fault
tolerance and scalability .

This also applies to a web app.

To maintain session state in a web farm type environment
you would need to use the sql server session storage
which isolates you from the problem of machine specific
session storage.

Jeff Levinson

Author of "Building Client/Server Applications with
VB.NET: An Example Driven Approach"

 

[Jim Hubbard]

With a large enough pile of salt, anything can be balanced.