[rkeith27]

I was approached and asked about virtualizing my web farm. I currently have 3 servers in the farm. What is the consense on this forum regarding virtualization of a web server (IIS)? Also, what about SSL sessions and sesiion persistance; will it be the same as it was with a load balanced web farm? Looking for any guidance on this. Thanks.

[kenobewan]

Originally Posted by rkeith27

I was approached and asked about virtualizing my web farm. I currently have 3 servers in the farm. What is the consense on this forum regarding virtualization of a web server (IIS)? Also, what about SSL sessions and sesiion persistance; will it be the same as it was with a load balanced web farm? Looking for any guidance on this. Thanks.

Depends on the reason that you are doing it. Virtual servers can have problems, but in theory you can do the all the same things. One dependant may be redundancy and whether a web farm forms part of planned failover. One piece of hardware can mean single point of failure. So depends on your priorities. Set these and which server design to use will follow.

[rkeith27]

I certianly don't want a single point of failure on the physical hardware of the virtual server. With that said do you load balance it just like you would normal physical web servers? I'm really looking for the "best practices". My gut says hardware load balancer with 2 virtual servers.

[kenobewan]

Sounds to me like a good approach.