When it comes to SharePoint, it is not uncommon for most companies to use a single farm for sharing information amongst its users. While this makes installation convenient, it can severely slow down access as well as increase your vulnerability to risk.

In order to mitigate the negative effects, you can install multiple Web Front-end (WFE) servers and a Network Load Balancer (NLB) to distribute requests and increase reliability through redundancy. With these risk mitigation measures in place, if a WFE server fails, the NLB can distribute requests to other WFE servers.

In part eight of our new series on Network Load Balancing, we’ll show you how to verify that the load on your network is being correctly balanced and that you are hitting WFE2 when WFE1 is stopped.

To begin, go to either WFE1 or WFE2.

Next, go to Administrative Tools and select Network Load Balancing Manager.

Enter the Cluster IP address.  In this example, we’ll be using the following address: 172.16.17.118

Right-click on WFE1 and select Control Host.  Select Stop.

After you click on Stop, you should see the following:

Next, to verify that the load on your network is being correctly balanced, enter your load-balanced URL (in this example: http://loadbalancing.chau.local) into a client browser.  When you do this, you should hit WFE2 (since WFE1 has been stopped).   When your network is correctly balanced, you will see that even if a server is down, you are still able to access your site.

To further test your Network Load Balancing, go into the Network Load Balancing Manager and stop both servers (WFE1 and WFE2).  You will notice that when both are stopped, you are not able to access your site.

Want to learn more about Network Load Balancing and how you can load balance Web traffic in order to increase the availability and reliability of your SharePoint solution?  If so, check out the rest of our series:

• • Part One: How to Display Network Load Balancing Manager in Windows Server 2008
  • Part Two: How to Display Network Load Balancing Manager in Windows Server 2012
  • Part Three: Installing Network Load Balancing on WFE1 in a Three-Server Farm
  • Part Four: Installing Network Load Balancing on WFE2 in a Three-Server Farm
  • Part Five: How to Disable the Loopback Checking Feature
  • Part Six: How to Configure Alternate Access Mappings in SharePoint
  • Part Seven: How to Run the Load Balancing URL on a Client Computer