Scaling Out .NET

Brian RitchieChief ArchitectPayformance Corporation

Email: brian.ritchie@gmail.comBlog: http://weblog.asp.net/britchieWeb: http://www.dotnetpowered.com

Scale Out your .NET applications by leveraging IIS7, AppFabric, Web Farm Framework, and Web Deploy

Who am I?

Brian Ritchie» Chief Architect at Payformance Corporation» Nearly 20 years of development experience» Developing on .NET since 1.0 Beta 1» Contributed to Mono and other open source

projects

Reasons to scale out

» Increases Reliability

» Increases Performance

» Provides Elastic Scalability

So why isn’t everyone doing it?

Scale Out Challenges

» Design Considerations

» Management Complexities

» Maintenance Challenges

Components of a scaled out architecture

» Load Balancing˃ Network Load Balancing˃ Queued Processing˃ Workflow Distribution

» Distributed Caching

» Use load balancing to spread work across multiple machines

˃ Building out instead of building up uses lower cost

resources

˃ Elastic scaling for extra capacity

˃ Prevent single point of failure

Increase Reliability & PerformanceLoad Balancing

» Network Load Balancing˃ NLB: Network Load Balancer˃ ARR: Application Request Routing˃ F5 BigIP Local Traffic Manager

Increase Reliability & PerformanceLoad Balancing Options

» Workflow Distribution˃ Windows Server AppFabric

Increase Reliability & PerformanceLoad Balancing Options

Increase Reliability & PerformanceLoad Balancing Options

» Queued Processing˃ Pick a queue: MSMQ, SQL Service Broker, SQL Table, etc.˃ Process it with a multi-threaded Always-On Services

Queue

WorkersEnqueue

Effects of Queued Processing

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 210

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

NormalQueued

» Using caching to decrease load on

centralized database resources

» Load balanced web servers required

shared session

Increase Reliability & PerformanceCaching

» A Distributed Cache has these benefits:˃ In-Memory for Performance˃ Replicated for Reliability˃ ASP.NET providers for easy integration˃ Doesn’t add a single point of failure

» Options˃ Windows Server AppFabric Cache (“Velocity”)˃ MemCached

Increase Reliability & PerformanceDistribute Your Cache

» A scaled out infrastructure presents its own set of challenges:˃ How do I provision resources easily?

˃ Do I need to manage each machine individually?

˃ How do I deploy application updates?

˃ How do I automate the manual tasks?

Management & MaintenanceChallenges

The Solution…

» IIS7+AppFabric: Application Platform˃ Unified application platform: web sites, web services, always-on services˃ Move your Windows Services to IIS7 with AppFabric to improve

management & deployment

Management & Maintenance Solutions:Application Platform

» Web Deploy 2.1 ˃ Combines all build resources into one package and

makes deploying applications to the host server easy˃ Components• Command-line tools• Server-side service• MSBuild packaging support• Visual Studio configuration integration

Management & Maintenance Solutions:Deployment Automation

» Web Deploy 2.1

Management & Maintenance Solutions:Deployment Automation

Build/Deploy Server

Deploy

IISServer

IIS MMC – Import Application

Package

Build Server(using MSBuild)

DeploymentPackage

IIS MMC – Export Application

» Web Farm Framework 2.0˃ Centralized farm management˃ Easily provision resources˃ Distribute updates across the farm˃ Ease maintenance with rolling upgrades & automatic

load balancer control˃ Extensible: Plug-ins for managing 3rd party load

balancers

Management & MaintenanceSolutions

» Web Farm Framework 2.0

Management & MaintenanceSolutions

control

Primary

control

synchronize

deploy

Management & Maintenance Solutions: Monitoring via

AppFabric

» Windows Server AppFabric Dashboard

Putting it all togetherwith a sample web farm

DEMO

Hardware load balancerBigIP F5

Web Farm• ASP.NET Web Application• IIS7• Web Farm Framework 2.0• Windows Server AppFabric• ASP.NET AppFabric Session Provider• Web Deploy

Cache Cluster• AppFabric Cache Service

Deployer• Web Deploy

» System Center Operations Manager with Windows Server AppFabric Management Pack˃ AppFabric Event Collection service˃ AppFabric Workflow Management service˃ AppFabric Caching Service˃ AppFabric SQL monitoring databases˃ AppFabric SQL Workflow Instance Stores˃ AppFabric database connections˃ IIS Hosted WCF and WF services

Management & Maintenance Solutions: Monitoring via

Operations Manager

» Automate using:

» Automation tools cover:• AppFabric• IIS7• Web Farm Farmwork

Powershell

API

Management & Maintenance Solutions: Task Automation

Questions?

» Web Farm Framework˃ Web Farm Framework

http://www.iis.net/download/WebFarmFramework˃ Scott Gu’s Introduce to WFF 2.0

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/08/introducing-the-microsoft-web-farm-framework.aspx˃ WFF Documentation (including API & Powershell)

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/905/microsoft-web-farm-framework-20-for-iis-7/

» Windows AppFabric˃ AppFabric Architecture Guide

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yasserabdelkader/archive/2010/09/12/release-of-windows-server-appfabric-architecture-guide.aspx˃ AppFabric Management Pack for Op Mgr 2007

http://blogs.technet.com/b/appfabric/archive/2010/06/14/appfabric-management-pack-available-for-operations-manager-2007.aspx˃ AppFabric Presentation

http://rstonkus.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/partner-conference-windows-server-appfabric/

» Other˃ Memcached ASP.NET Providers

http://memcachedproviders.codeplex.com/˃ SQL Table Queues

http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1257˃ Azure Scalability using Queues

http://www.cloudbook.net/resources/stories/-azure-scalability--use-queues-as-your-bridges˃ Web Deploy Team Blog

http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/default.aspx˃ Application Request Routing

http://www.iis.net/download/ApplicationRequestRoutinghttp://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/486/http-load-balancing-using-application-request-routing/http://blogs.iis.net/mailant/archive/2010/03/25/how-iis-application-request-routing-arr-powers-elastic-scale-for-maximumasp.aspx

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