Call Particular Web farm

Question

Some background. Currently have an asp.net web site which is contained on 2 web servers which are load balanced i.e. web farm.

I would like to have some code which would allow me to call a particular server and execute a method on it. I WANT TO do this so that i can force all web servers to refresh their cache via a web page on the site.

Use Case is: Admin user logs into site and makes a change to a setting which is cached and then clicks "Refresh web server cache" button which then calls the update cache method on each of the servers. this is to prevent me from having to restart the app pool every time a cached setting is changed.

Answer 1

Load balanced web servers still have their own IP address, to be clear; the load balancer has a third IP Address (which the DNS entry is usually pointed to) and it just decides, through some internal logic, to forward requests to one or another web server.

Therefore, you can usually still hit a specific web server by using its IP address, rather than that of the load balancer.

Answer 2

Jamiec's answer is correct; each machine still has its own IP. I use an ASHX handler to receive the requests to reset the cache. Any machine in the web farm can initiate the request.

This is a fairly complete example, but there are some helper methods and configuration settings that I have not included.

   <!-- 

    URL of user web application that can be used to clear caches.  
    Delimit multiple URLS with pipes: url1|url2|url3 

    -->
    <add key="UserServers" value="http://123.456.789.001/|http://123.456.789.002" />

Here's the code to actually invoke a handler on each site that performs the cache reset. I suggest using some sort of shared password between machines and separately securing the handler so that it can't be accessed publicly.

        /// <summary>
        /// Calls for a reset of caches on one or more user sites serving reports. 
        /// Allows for multiple urls to be processed; configure the reset targets
        /// using AppSettings["UserCacheResetUrl"], delimited with pipes if there
        /// are multiple sites. 
        /// </summary>
        public static void ClearAllUserCaches()
        {
            //
            // clear local user caches
            ClearUserCaches();

            //
            // clear out of process user caches

            string[] urls = AppSettings.UserServers;

            for( int i = 0; i < urls.Length; i++ )
            {
                string url = urls[i] + AppSettings.UserCacheResetPath + "&sharedPassword=" + AppSettings.SharedPassword;

                WebRequest request = null;
                HttpWebResponse response = null;

                try
                {
                    request = WebRequest.Create( url );
                    response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
                }
                catch( WebException ex )
                {
                    Log.LogException( ex );
                }
                finally
                {
                    request = null;
                }

                if( response == null || response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK )
                {
                    if( response != null )
                    {
                        response.Close();
                        response = null;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Handler code itself (sorry for length).

    /// <summary>
    /// Exposes an interface for trusted callers to request that this
    /// instance of the application perform an action.
    /// </summary>
    public class AdministrationRequestHandler : IHttpHandler
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Processes an incoming request and performs an action specified via the "action"
        /// parameter passed on the query string.  Only local callers will be allowed, and
        /// only callers who pass a shared password via the "sharedPassword" query string
        /// parameter.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="context"></param>
        public void ProcessRequest( HttpContext context )
        {
            //
            // get the action from the query string, and check that
            // it actually contains a value.
            string action = context.Request.QueryString["action"].ToSafeString().ToUpper( CultureInfo.InvariantCulture );

            if( string.IsNullOrEmpty( action ) )
            {
                //
                // Dump out an error message and return--we can't do anything
                // without an action and this request may have malicious
                // origins.
                context.Response.Write( "Missing action." );
                return;
            }

            //
            // Now validate the shared password that all web applications in this
            // solution should be using.  This password will NEVER be placed on a user's
            // query string or ever passed over a public network.
            string sharedPassword = context.Request.QueryString["sharedPassword"].ToSafeString();

            if( string.IsNullOrEmpty( sharedPassword ) )
            {
                context.Response.Write( "Missing shared password." );
                return;
            }

            //
            // check that the shared password is actually valid
            if( sharedPassword != AppSettings.SharedPassword )
            {
                context.Response.Write( "Invalid shared password." );
                return;
            }

            //
            // perform the specified action
            if( action == "CLEAR_CACHE" )
            {
                AppContext.ClearUserCaches();
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Specifies whether or not the instance is reusable.
        /// </summary>
        public bool IsReusable
        {
            get
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }