Frontpage 2003 publish web from remote iis 6.0 server to remote iis 6.0 server slow

[Lloyd]

All,

I am experiencing transfer speed issues when attempting to publish
from an IIS 6.0 website to another IIS 6.0 website running on a remote
Windows 2003 server.
The environment configuration/process I am trying to achieve is as
follows (please be aware this is an Intranet environment):

A number of web developers connect remotely from their XP Professional
machines using the Frontpage 2003 'File>Open Site' dialog to a
development website hosted on the development/staging server (Windows
2003 Server Standard, IIS 6.0). Two websites are running on the
development/staging server hosted with individual IP addresses, e.g.
http://intranetdevelopment (192.168.9.182) and http://intranetstaging
(192.168.9.188).
When the developers try and publish their updates to the Staging
website (hosted on the same server) publishing remotely from their
machines using the 'Remote Web Site' and 'Remote Web Site Properties'
options in Frontpage 2003 the transfer speed rarely increases from
around 1KB/s, obviously this is completely unworklable and times out
before completion, which is predicted at some 11+ hours.
Below are the relevant configurations and settings within the
environment:

Client Machines: Windows XP Professional sp1, Frontpage 2003
Development/Staging Server: Windows 2003 Server Standard, IIS 6.0,
Frontpage Server Extensions 2002.
NOTE: Both client and server are within the same subnet.

When trying to publish the following are set within FP 2003 under
'Remote Web Site Properties':
Remote Website Tab:
Remote web server type: Frontpage or Sharepoint Services
Optimize HTML Tab:
Nothing selected
Publishing Tab:
General Publish: 'All Pages, overwriting pages already on
destination', 'Include subsites'
General Changes: 'Use source for file stamps to determine changes
since last publish'
Loggins: 'Log changes during publish'

I have tryed many variations of these settings particulary within the
publishing tab, but to no avail.

I have tryed publishing from a local IIS 5.1 website on a client
machine (also within the same subnet as the development/staging
server) to the staging website and experience lightning fast (well
fast for HTTP) transfer. I can also successfully publish via FTP
(however I need to publish over HTTP using the FP extensions as we are
using specific FP components). I can also successfully achieve
standard windows file copy from the client to the sever, so I believe
we can rule out any network issues.

I have searched through the newsgroups, in particular
'microsoft.public.frontpage.client' and have found a number of posts
where people are experiencing similar problems, but no real hard and
fast solutions, is anybody else experiencing the same/similar
publishing speed issues or know of any workable solutions?
I have investigated using the IIS Migration tool for IIS 6.0, but this
is limited in the amount of subwebs it can migrate and will only copy
between separate servers, not between websites on the same physical
server.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Lloyd H

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

This would be a network issue, suggest you post to the appropriate Windows newsgroup.

When you publish a FP web from one server to another or from one location to another on the same
server, the process pass thru the client PC that initiated the publishing process.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Lloyd]

Thomas,

Thanks for your response, but I don't see how this can be a network
issue, as I mentioned I have tried copying files both with FTP and
using standard windows copy between shares, also all machines are
within the same subnet and we are experiencing no other network issues
in general. However one thing I have noticed is when the developers
edit the production site live (as the development environment is not
in place) using FP2003 and opening the site as a 'Local Site' they
often complain of performance degredation in simply traversing the
file structure and editing files, it's not unsual for them to wait
minutes for FP to return the folder contents.
This seems to "magically" sort itself out come around 17:30 when the
majority of users have gone home, can general web server high usage
impact FP editing as both methods are over HTTP?
If so what is the best method to prevent this, is it simply a number
of concurrent connections/connection timeout issue?
Can FP Server Extensions be restarted or inactive connections be
flushed?
Do you think this could be manifesting the same issue I am having with
publishing?

Any guidance would be much appreciated

Many Thanks,

Lloyd

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Working with remote folder via drive letters or via FTP, and is not the same as working via http.
This is not an FP client issue, but a network issue. However since I noticed that you are using
Windows 2003 Server with the FP extensions, it is most likely a FP extensions configuration issue.
Drop me an email, if you have physical Admin. access on this server.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Lloyd]

Thomas,

I have made slight progress on this issue. I decided to kick off a
complete web publish last night between two different servers. I
opened our current Production website as the local server (note: the
Production server is within a seperate subnet) and the development
website as the Remote server, this was to try and get a copy of the
Production site into the Development environment. The remote
(development) site was a completely empty site and I freshly extended
the virtual server with FPSE 2002. After kicking off the publish it
predicted something like 11hrs to copy at 1KB/s, I went home leaving
it to it's own devices. This morning I found a huge amount of errors
in the Application log on the local (source) Production server.

------- START ERROR 1 ---------
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: FrontPage 5.0
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 09/02/2005
Time: 17:27:37
User: N/A
Computer: ProdIIS01
Description:
Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions:
http://myprodserver - Error #2000c Message: Write error on file
"author.log".

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
------- END ERROR 1 ---------

------- START ERROR 2 ---------
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: FrontPage 5.0
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 08/02/2005
Time: 11:01:30
User: N/A
Computer: ProdIIS01
Description:
Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions:
http://myprodserver - Error #2000d Message: Cannot lock file
"author.log". Either the file is in use or the web server is
temporarily busy.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
------- END ERROR 2 ---------

------- START ERROR 3 ---------
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: FrontPage 5.0
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 08/02/2005
Time: 11:01:30
User: N/A
Computer: ProdIIS01
Description:
Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions:
(OS Error #11 Message: Resource temporarily unavailable)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
------- END ERROR 3 ---------

These errors always appear in groups of threes, with a couple of
minutes between each occurance. Over last night I had in excess of
2090 individual Ferrors with the Event Source: FrontPage 5.0 over the
period of about 13 hours, where they suddenly stopped, I believe this
was when IIS decided to stop servicing Frontpage publish requests and
timed out, disconnecting FP2003.

Next I did a bit of searching on Google and found the following MS
article within there support area:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;832881&Product=fpw
Even though the error messages don't exactly match the ones I was
getting I found that the 3 causes were true within my environment. I
subsequently turned off the 'Log authoring actions' setting on the
virtual server, both on source and destination.
I deleted all data from the destination (Development) virtual server
and re-extended it with FPSE2002.
I am now running a publish and am getting a transfer rate of around
14KB/s with a predicted completion time of 4hours and no further
errors within the event log.
Due to this current environment setup being different from what I
previously explained, i.e. I am copying across servers (Production
server is identical configuration of development, i,e, W 2003 Server,
FPSE2002) and the Production server being in a different subnet within
our data centre which we only have a 2MB line to I am pleasantly
suprised with the transfer rate of 14KB/s, bearing in mind that this
is all over HTTP and the 2MB line is shared between half a dozen
users. Next step is to try publishing locally again between virtual
servers on the devlopment/staging server.

Another thing that has been drawn to my attention is the size of our
frontpage web, it's approximately 700MB!!! (don't ask me why, I think
the web developers have gone mad) with only a dozen or so subwebs, I'm
sure this is also amplifying the issue. I hope to try only publishing
files that have altered after completing this mammoth first publish to
see if performance is improved, and also kick the developers in to
shape and get them to reduce the size of there root and subwebs. Can
anyone point me in the write direction (i.e articles) or give me
examples of best practices for FP development and root web/sub web
design?

Thanks,

Lloyd

Working with remote folder via drive letters or via FTP, and is not the same as working via http.
This is not an FP client issue, but a network issue. However since I noticed that you are using
Windows 2003 Server with the FP extensions, it is most likely a FP extensions configuration issue.
Drop me an email, if you have physical Admin. access on this server.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

<snip>...

</snip>

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

You have a permissions issue on the server. However in reference to the Author.log, you can turn
this option off under the extensions, so that the file is not created/used.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================