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Any real benefit to running the web server on a different system?

I was recently made aware of the fact that you can split the web server off from the primary polling engine and run it off a different box. I have 3 questions:

Has anyone tried this (if so, was it difficult, any problems doing it)?

Are there significant positive results that make this worth it?

Does the web page and main map end up loading much faster?

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Accepted answers

timf

We are also running two additional web servers (load balanced) to keep the web traffic off of our very busy pollers. I wouldn't say we had a big increase in speed, but the whole point was to not bog down the pollers.

The only gotcha is that you need be sure to install the additional web server components for each additional module you might have, ie. netflow, NCM, IP SLA, APM. Sometimes solarwinds makes them a free download that is publicly accessible, and other times they need to be added to your customer portal for licensing purposes, which sometimes don't get adjusted when they release a new version of the module. That's the only pain in the butt.

All comments

Donald_Francis

This is something I have done. I was happy I did it. The main box is a busy box and taking the web load to a diff box helped out a lot but I do have many web users. It really depends on how busy your main box is and how many people use the web page.

warbird

Thank you. On any given day, I may have ~15 web users online at one time. Is that "many"? Also, did you find the process of moving the web site difficult or easy? Any gotchas you ran into?

timf

warbird

Interesting. Thanks a lot for the info, timf.

byrona

Much like timf we also run two web servers and load balance between the two. Our primary reason for doing this was to both support the load of our customers accessing the system as well as to seperate the web servers for security purposes.

Besides the frustrations that timf mentioned I have also found that if you want any custom reports you have created to be available on the web servers you need to manually copy them over. Also, if you make changes to custom properties you need to log into each of the web servers and use a synchronization tool to get those changes reflected on them.

Having the additional web servers is nice but there is a bit more management overhead associated with them than I would have expected. I am hoping that SW is able to automate and integrate them better in the future.

NinjaNerd56

I only have 20 defined users, but installed the web server anyway to take the CPU and RAM hit off of the Main Poller. Typical system response is very good.

I also did the Windows Pass-Through Authentication detailed on pages 81 and 307 of the Admin manual. That gives the users single sign on and is a little more secure than the default local database method.

Aliased the Web Server in DNS, changing the old record pointing to the Main Poller IIS instance, and the whole thing...installation, WPA, live and in color...was done in well under an hour.

If you have custom logos, etc. for your web page, those objects need to move to the new server as well. Also any sound files you're using for audible alerts.

It could be slicker; variable fields for reports, text-to-speech capability, report pass-through, and such for the Additional Web Server are on my list. All said, it's probably worth the effort.

phattpks

I can not seem to find a PDF (walk through) on how to complete this process?

Can someone send me the directions or a link to a PDF?

Thanks