Problem with extending to three server farm - PS2007

[Owe Evans]

One of the benefits (stated in Sharepoint paper) is possibility to extending
the farm with several servers when needed ...

I cannot find an easy way of achieving this though ...

My farm setup before extending with a third server looks likes this:

Server A. - a single web/app server
Server B. - a SQL server

PWA is accessed at URL - http://serverA/PWA

This is what I want to achieve:

Server C. - a new server intended to act as a web frontend server
Server A. - turning this into the app server
Server B. - SQL

And then PWA should be accessed at - http://serverC/PWA

I have successfully added the third server to the farm (by installing MOSS
and Project Server)

When this is done and I browse for PWA at http://serverC/PWA I am redirected
to http://serverA/PWA and this is normal because the webapplication for PWA
is on serverA and the fact that the 'Windows Sharepoint Services Web
Application' service is still running on ServerA.

So, I thought the way ahead was to stop the 'Web application service' on
ServerA but this leads to:
- PWA not accessible at all
- SSP Admin page not accessible at all

My guess is that I will have to
- create a new SSP (with new contentDB) on a new Web application I create at
ServerC
- create a new PWA web application on ServerC, new Site Collection for PWA
and to point to existing ContentDB when doing this.

I am wondering if this is the procedure to go when going from a two server
installation to a three server or if there is another procedure so you do not
have to delete/recreate SSP and PWA web app etc.

Thanks,
Owe

 

[Paul Conroy]

Owe,

You'd be better off having two web/app servers instead of splitting the
web/app layers as this will increase the throughput and performance.

However in your scenario, I'd leave the web layer on server A and install
simply install project server onto server C. This way you don't need to
worry about redirecting the web layer. Once installed all you need to do is
start the project application service on C and stop it on A, though stopping
it on is not absolutely necessary.

Paul

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[Owe Evans]

Thanks Paul.

Yes I agree with you - to add ServerC as an application server sounds as the
right way to go. Ofcourse this leaves SSP and Central Admin on front end
server - I don't know if that comes with some drawbacks or not. I took a new
look at Microsoft Deployment guide after your reply and oddly the scenario
with adding web front end servers is not covered. Would be of great interest
to folk to know that SSP and PWA will have to recreated if choosen to add the
new server as a frontend and stopping web application service on app server.


Interesting point you have here :
"you'd be better off having two web/app servers instead of splitting the
web/app layers as this will increase the throughput and performance"

Do you base this on your own experience or some other source?

Thanks,
Owe

 

[Paul Conroy]

I started with single servers servicing web and app layers and saw a 20-30%
performance improvement by rebuilding the farm with web/app across both
servers. I have approx 15,000 projects (which are actually sales orders), 50
PM's (merchandisers) being serviced by 2 x x64 4GB Web/App severs and
clustered X64 24GB SQL servers. Whilst certain views take a while to
populate the queue throughput has been proven to be faster after the rebuild.

Certainly having central admin/ssp on the app layer is best practice,
however if you're not publishing to the Internet I don't have any issues with
them being on the web layer.

Adding a new front end server is covered very lighlty here
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197479.aspx#section6

The basic's for your scenario should be

Install WFE on new server (adding to existing farm)
Start web application service (this will replicate sites)
Change Alternate Access Mapping for PWA site to point to new server. This
will redirect PWA web requests to the new FE server whilst keeping SSP/CA
admin being serviced by the app server.
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