Chapter 8: Microsoft Application Center Server

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Overview

Running a Web site can be notoriously difficult since it entails balancing a set of requirements, such as scalability, manageability, hardware costs, and availability. As the number of users of the site increases, so does the success or failure of the site in the minds of businesspeople. Unfortunately, a Web site manager can never provide a satisfactory service in the minds of many people-any technical successes are generally hidden from the day-to-day users-but believe you me, when the Web site fails, everyone knows about it.

To assist in the management of a Web site, Microsoft released Microsoft Application Center Server, which is designed to offer better levels of manageability, scalability, and availability out of the box. Application Center has a set of tools that creates and manages a cluster of servers containing identical content, and with load balancing these tools ensure that demand for the application is spread evenly across these clustered servers (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1: Application Center Server balancing workload and content.

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