IIS Shared Configuration Best Practice (Windows 2019)

Question

IIS Shared Configuration Best Practice (Windows 2019)

Salves 501

Hi,

i'm got an IIS server with my sites and I thought about using the IIS Shared option but I worry about using UNC paths.

I did a test sharing server A with local files, but server B uses the UNC path of server A. That is, if server A becomes unavailable, it doesn't help at all.

Same situation if I put the files in a UNC path which will be my point of failure.

Is there any other alternative to ensure greater resilience?

For example, use a DFS-R to replicate configuration files and website files?

Thanks.

2 answers

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Answer 1

JimmySalian-2011 42,511

Hi Salves,

DFSR file shares or Cluster File Servers (shares) can be used for shared configuration, basically if you want full proof redundancy you will have to explore all the options for failover such as Networks, Storage, Server availability.

In my opinion Cluster File server or DFSR works as you can have multiple servers for availability, but it will come with a cost and you have to maintain the uptime.

More info over here for configuration - shared-configuration_264

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Salves 501 Reputation points

2022-09-04T20:44:13.403+00:00

Hi,

I just think using a cluster for this is a bit of a stretch.

I understand that DFS would be an acceptable feature, but if we still use a UNC path I honestly don't see much use.

I found some people commenting that using the following configuration:

1 - Enabled IIS sharing and routed to an unshared local path.

2 - Enabled DFS to replicate this configuration directory between servers and configured the share of other servers also pointing to this local directory.

They say it has been working for a few months without any problems, but this I read in the community in 2015.

I believe that because it is not a configuration mentioned in the documentation, the answer is that there are no guarantees, but honestly I thought it was a brilliant idea because we are talking about configuration sharing where DFS is doing the same job at the end of the day.

Thanks.
Yurong Dai-MSFT 2,846 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2022-09-05T06:53:55.267+00:00

Hi @Salves ,
Have you solved your problem with this configuration?
Salves 501 Reputation points

2022-09-07T03:27:46.42+00:00

Hi @Yurong Dai-MSFT ,

I did a test and it worked.

Now I'm extending my lab to validate a crash simulation to understand if something went unnoticed.

But it seems to work fine.

Thanks.

Answer 2

Hello there,

If you are using DFS-R to replicate configuration files and planning to increase the resilience , the article describes several of these parameters and provides general guidance for setting the parameter values to improve IIS performance.

Optimizing IIS Performance https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/technical-guides/optimizing-iis-performance

I hope this information helps. If you have any questions please let me know and I will be glad to help you out.

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IIS Shared Configuration Best Practice (Windows 2019)

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