NLB clustion problem. Please HELP

PiotrIr

Could you give me advice what solution I should use to provide high
availability for this scenario?

IIS server connected to SQL database (IIS 7.0, Windows Server 2008, SQL 200.
Dedicated solutions are: Server Cluster for SQL – what is fine and NLB cluster for IIS and I found one
problem with this.
Files on IIS server supposed to change very really but in this case system
users upload attachments to local HDD instead to database. I asked developers
if they are able to change it and answer was no (too much work).

So my question is what can I do? Is any way to provide fail over cluster for
IIS and have one storage for it? I don’t need load balancing but I need real
fail over.
And in addition IIS health on service level needs to be checked.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks.

Claymoore

Just so we can be clear what you are asking, are you looking for a way that the programmers can update the website with new pages but only have to update a single location?

You could build your websites on top of a Distributed File System (DFS) installation. Create a DFS root folder that synchronizes between the servers and pur the web root folder under the DFS root. You update the page on one server and DFS takes care of the rest.

astorrs

Or create a virtual directory that points to a file share (perhaps on the cluster since it's already redundant) and have them upload to there.

Personally I like the DFS-R option better - just make sure you watch to make sure the replication doesn't break.

PiotrIr

Thanks for your replies.

Unfortunately it is not for programmers. Users using this system from internet upload some files – documents. To make their work easier developers decided to store these attachments on virtual directories on local drive.

I almost decided to point IIS webpage to shared storage sitting on file cluster (no replication). May I ask you to advice if this solution makes any sense? Any disadvantages of this solution?

Claymoore

PiotrIr wrote:

Thanks for your replies.

Unfortunately it is not for programmers. Users using this system from internet upload some files – documents. To make their work easier developers decided to store these attachments on virtual directories on local drive.

I almost decided to point IIS webpage to shared storage sitting on file cluster (no replication). May I ask you to advice if this solution makes any sense? Any disadvantages of this solution?

DFS will take care of those uploaded documents as well, provided the actual path of the virtual directory is below the DFS root on the local drive of the web server. Anything below the DFS root is replicated between the servers participating in DFS for that share. This is how the SYSVOL is replicated in 2008 (2003 uses FSR - not sure if you can use DFS if all domain controllers are 2003 R2).

Shared storage is also a possiblity since you can point virtual directories to other locations, but now you have additional security concerns. Would the file be written to shared storage using the user's credentials (if they have to log in)? If so, then every user would have to have rights to the shared folder location. If no login is required then the files would be written and owned by the service account running IIS. Depending on the location of the shared storage, you may have to open additional firewall ports as well.

PiotrIr

Many thanks for this. Now I need to choose the best option.

Best Regards