How to Test Individual Front End Web Server

Question

My farm consists of two front end (FE) web servers that are managed by a load balancer. One FE went down so we configured the load balancer to only send traffic to the other FE. We rebuilt the failed FE and rejoined the farm which appears to have worked successfully (looking at IIS). I want to test the new FE before configuring the Load Balancer to use the new server.

The approach I took was to add the IP/URL to my host file that pointed to the new server but nothing comes up.

Any advice would be great. Thanks

Answer 1

If you are currently using hardware load balancing (and both servers sit behind it) you will probably need to add a new virtual IP address to your load balancer that connects only to the new FE before re-introducing it into the farm.

Add this virtual IP address to your hosts file for your domain name and you should be able to test it individually.

Answer 2

what if you add the ip/url of the working FE server to your host file? does nothing come up then? also, be careful about spaces vs. tabs vs. multiple spaces in your host file:

http://geekswithblogs.net/JanS/archive/2009/06/17/beware-of-spacing-in-windows7-hosts-file.aspx

Answer 3

How you would normally do this is to add an AAM entry for the servers hostname.

For example have

• intranet.domain.com resolves to your NLB which then distributes requests
• to SharePoint servers called WFE1, WFE2 etc.

If you check SharePoints AAM (Central Administration > Operations > Alternate Access Mappings) you should have intranet.domain.com as url for the default zone (and you should only have one default zone entry per web applicaton).

If you add WFE1/WFE2 etc the AAM under the custom zone so the internal URL (WFEx) is mapped to the public URL (intranet.domain.com) then you should be able to go directly to your WFE by using the address http://WFEx/ in your browser.

As long as your DNS server is setup correctly this will work from any computer on your network regardless if its part of the NLB farm or not - essential for troubleshooting.

If you can't do this check a ping to WFEx is returning the servers IP address and not some other address such as the NLB/firewall etc.

MSDN - What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings

Answer 4

So you've made a hosts file entry that points the cluster DNS name to one of the WFE's private ip adresses?

Make sure you can see that ip address. Sometimes only the cluster ip adress is visible to the outside and not the servers' private ip.

I usually add a host file entry for the cluster DNS name to each WFE. That way I can remote desktop to a machine and test it locally there. I do have remote desktop access..