If you're using Server-Activated objects and .NET remoting, the inbuilt load-balancing facilities of W2K Advanced Server are all that you need.
I have taken this exact approach with a client. It has worked. Please remember, though, that physically separating business layer from the presentation layer will result in a *severe* performance degradation. As Scott Guthrie (Mr. ASP.NET) says: "I would strongly recommend not separating out your business and data layers across two different physical tiers. The cost of doing network hops and serialization (whether binary for remoting or XML SOAP with web services) is very significant. You will see a dramatic performance drop if you do so (plan for at least a 10x drop in request/sec throughput). I would recommend using web services and/or remoting only where you absolutely must talk to a *different application* across the Internet or Intranet -- not for communication within the same logical application." Dan Green [ http://dotnetdan.com -- putting the dan in .net ] > -----Original Message----- > From: The DOTNET list will be retired 7/1/02 > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Alex Henderson > Sent: Monday, 10 June 2002 3:26 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [DOTNET] Remoting scalability question... > > I'm just putting together a proposal for a multi-tiered solution that > needs > to seriously scale if it takes off. > > Currently I'm planning to deploy across 3 machines: > > 1. web server (ASP.Net - C#) > 2. middleware server (web pages connect via remoting) > 3. SQL server 2k database backend. > > The middleware layer will be quite heavy and I want to make use of caching > objects etc. to improve the systems responsiveness - because of the > systems > functionality ASP.Net caching (on a per web page basis) isn't really > appropriate. > > Now the question - how can I get multiple machines running the middleware > (and exposing the functionality via remoting) to be connected too > "seamlessly" by the web server, so that requests to the middleware layer > are > balanced (i.e. I want to scale out as needed, adding more boxes capable of > doing the bulk of the processing and have remoting requests from the > webserver to be fed to each machine as needed). Has anyone done this or > have a suggestion as to how this could be achieved? > > Any feedback would be great appreciated... > > - Alex > > You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or > subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com. You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.
