How to synchronize more than one IIS web servers - iis

I have a .net web application, I want to host the app into more than one IIS web servers. The web servers must synchronized so if one web server is down than the others should respond to user requests.

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Self Hosting Web Application versus IIS Hosting?

I am in the process of building a Web based client for a Server application which is running as a Windows Service. The server application currently has a Windows Form based Client Application written in C# and the idea is to obsolete it and provide a new Web based Client Application. The Server application will be exposing REST based APIs and the Client Application would be using the REST APIs to communicate with the Server Application. (Currently the Server App exposes SOAP based endpoints which are consumed by the Windows Form Based App)
The Browser based client application would be written using Angular JS. The Client Application would be used by at max 10 concurrent users. The App is targeted for system administrators and would be used inside the enterprise environment.
Another requirement is to integrate Active Directory Authentication for the Client Application. So given the performance requirement and authentication requirements, I am wondering whether I should use IIS for hosting the Web Application. Or should I just use the existing Server to self host the web pages.
If at all I go with Self Hosting option, would Katana Self host be a good option? Or should i use WCF Rest kit to serve the pages?
What are the performance implications of using a Self Hosted mechanism for hosing the Web Application compared to IIS?
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.
WCF REST Starter kit is still in second preview 2 version from 2009 so I'd be pushed to recommend using it.
The question of IIS or self host depends, do you need the features that IIS has out of the box like logging, restart after failure, etc?
My suggestion would be to use ASP.NET Web API (or Nancy, which is an excellent choice too) but keep your hosting layer separate from your application layer so you have the flexibility to decide how you host your service later on.
The second suggestion is performance test early on, pick a hosting mechanism and measure how the service copes under load - you may find out that you're worrying about something that you don't need to.

Test multiple instances of a Web App in Azure App Service

I have a web application that was being developed using Web Roles in Azure. It is a relatively complex application in which clients communicate with each other via the web server. Client to server communication is via SignalR and within server instances Web Api is used.
It was critical that it was tested against multiple instances of web roles since the all of plumbing needed to potentially communicate across the various instances of web roles.
This was easy to do in web roles since in Visual Studio's project properties you would simply up the instance count and the Azure Compute Emulator would open a bunch of instances for you.
After attending a recent Microsoft technical briefing, it was suggested that web roles were being superseded by Web Apps in Azure App Service. Indeed on the surface these appeared to be a better fit to my problem and I have been investigating this as an architecture.
The problem I have found is how to simulate multiple instances? Web Apps in development spin up in a single IIS express instance and thus have the same IP address on my development computer. Web Roles spin up in difference instances and all have different IP addresses which makes testing easy. From what I understand on production, web apps, if configured to have multiple instances, will get different IP addresses (and/or ports) since they may be running on different servers
So how do I test multiple instances of Web Apps in the Azure App Service that need to cross communicate in development?
...or am I just missing something big here?
Thanks in advance.
Dave A
You can use the ARRAffinity value to specify which instance you want to hit, allowing your request to hit any instance you want.
You can find more details here: http://blog.amitapple.com/post/2014/03/access-specific-instance/#.VhLIGXmFMis
Could you run full IIS (w3wp) locally for testing? If so, you could create multiple sites or applications using different application pools, and hence processes.
I found this. http://blog.tylerdoerksen.com/2013/11/01/azure-websites-vs-cloud-services/
In short, given that I need to have some internal communication then Web Apps in Azure App Service should not be used.

What is the exact difference between Windows Azure and Windows IIS?

I have finished developing a webapplication on Visual Studio 2012 along with Microsoft SQL 2008. I'm trying to make it a "live" webapp which can be accessed through the phone rather than a localhost.
I researched and found 2 solutions which are
IIS
Azure
I have been looking all over the net for various clear explaination of the main difference between IIS and Azure. From my understanding, IIS is a web server application that comes with Windows Server and is used to serve up web sites while Azure is a Windows hosting solution that utilizes IIS. In that case why do people still uses IIS while Azure provide both a cloud platform and IIS?
Which is also better to host any typical web-application that used to run on the localhost?
I can't seems to find any thread in SO or ASP.Net forum which can clearly explain the main difference between the two along with the advantage and disadvantage.
Here are some of the link1, link2 i have found that provide brief information about the two.
What you are looking for is actually a place to run your web application, Teo.
As you've found, you can do that in IIS if you have a server that is connected to the Internet. A way to get such a server is to either got to a hosting company or just use the Windows Azure cloud as you've found as well.
One of the simplest ways for you to do this right now and for free is to sign up for a Windows Azure trial account. As part of that account you get a basic, shared Windows Azure Website for free.
Here are the links you need:
(1) http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/tutorials/get-started/
(2) http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/
I would strongly recommend that you go through the entire tutorial (1) step-by-step before trying to do this with your own application. Before you start, sign up for a trial account (2). You will not be charged in the first month and you will not be charged if you stick with the free website.
Enjoy.
Comparing IIS to Azure is irrelevant. Those are two different concepts, which are vaguely related to each other. You lack some very basic understanding of what each one means, and I recommend you to go and read about each them from scratch.
IIS is indeed a web server application. That means, for example, that it can rout HTTP request and responds to and from the web site application that you have created.
To keep it simple, let's say that IIS can run on any Windows machine, which makes the machine a Web Server.
If you want to have your web site up and running, you need either have your own machine that acts as a web server, or either upload your web site application to some other machine.
Azure is a group of cloud services. One of the services is a Web Site Host, that allows you to use cloud computers to run the IIS that hosts your web site.
As part of the service, Azure will take care of installing and using the IIS server for you.
Bottom line, if you are going the Windows path, you will probably end up using Both Azure and IIS (unless you will want to self host your web site...)

What is the difference between Azure Web Site and Azure Cloud service

We are looking to host a website (some css,js, one html file but not aspx, one generic handler).
We deployed in as:
1) Azure Web Site
2) Azure Cloud Service
Both solutions work. There is a question though: which way of hosting it is better and why? Second thing: as there might be a lot of traffic - which solution would be cheaper?
Thanks in advance,
Krzysztofuncjusz
You may want to review this article that explains the primary differences. Web Sites are best for running web applications that are relatively isolated (that do not require elevated security, remote desktop, network isolation...). Cloud services are more advanced because they give you more control over web sites while still remaining flexible. And VMs are for full control over applications that need to be installed and configured (like running SQL Server for example).
I think that main difference in abilities to modify VM and possibility to configure scalability. Web sites is something like classic hosting, without ability to login by rdp. Cloud Services allows you to configure VM and if necessary setup scalability and availability.

Best options to host my asmx web service on machine not having IIS

We have a requirement where we need to have some web services running on a server machine but it does not have IIS available. I came across this article on running asmx without IIS and many other sites/blogs have mentioned this article as well.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163879.aspx
Could somebody offer alternatives to above to run asmx web services without IIS installed?
Other option i could find was Cassini - http://ultidev.com/products/cassini/
Windows Azure! That is precisely what it was designed for... it’s cheap and reliable!

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