Setting Up a Stager

The stager that we're going to set up next consists of a single server running Application Center—it is a cluster of one member, which is all we need to use the New Deployment Wizard and leverage it's capabilities, particularly in the area of component installation. However, there's nothing to prevent you from building a multi-member staging environment if you feel it's required. You may find, for example, that you want to use the staging cluster for final pre-deployment testing, in which case a staging cluster with several members makes sense and is desirable from a failover perspective.

Server Configuration

As was the case with the other servers we configured earlier, the stager is running Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Application Center installed.

Because our stager is going to be used solely for deployments, we did a custom installation of the product and disabled the installation of Application Center Events and Performance Logging—any performance monitoring we need to do can be accomplished easily by using Windows 2000 System Monitor. Also, the stager only has one network adapter with a single dedicated IP address because we aren't going to do any load balancing.

NOTE

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Remember to configure your stager with the same directory and file structure that you used on the Web and COM+ clusters.

Create a Staging Cluster

Open the Application Center snap-in, and then launch the New Cluster Wizard in the same way you did when you created the initial clusters. The steps, in brief, are:

1. Connect to the server, and then identify the server by its name or use localhost.
2. Click Create a new cluster.
3. Use the information provided in Table 8.5 to create the cluster on the stager.

Table 8.5 New Cluster Wizard Configuration Information for the Stager

Wizard page	Configuration information, comments
Welcome to the New Cluster Wizard	Click Next
Cluster Name and Description	Cluster name: RKStager
Cluster description: A staging cluster.
Cluster Type	Keep default: General/Web cluster
Load Balancing	Change to None
Monitoring Notifications	E-mail address: [e-mail] E-mail server name: yourmailserver
Completing the New Cluster Wizard	Click Next

At the end of this process, we have a cluster named RKStager that consists of a single member (ACDW822AS in our test configuration).

Before loading any applications on your system, you should disable any automatic services that aren't required for staging operations, such as automatically synchronizing members when content is updated (right-click the cluster name, click Properties, and then in the clustername Properties dialog box, click the General tab).

NOTE

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Several services, such as request forwarding, are automatically disabled by Application Center when you create a cluster without load balancing enabled.

Validate the Configuration

You should perform some simple validation tests to verify that the staging cluster is operating correctly. In addition to pinging the network adapter from external clients, you can use Internet Explorer to open the Web-based administration interface by specifying the stager name and port 4242 as the URL (that is, http://stagername:4242).