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 six of our new series on Network Load Balancing, we’ll show you how to configure Alternate Access Mappings in SharePoint.
To begin, open the Central Administration page and select Application Management. Under Web Applications, select Configure alternate access mappings.
Select the Web application that you want the Network Load Balancing you configured in parts 1-5 to control. In this example, we have selected port 80 (default).
Under URL protocol, host, and port, enter the URL that you set in part 3. In this example, we’ll be using the following URL: http://LoadBalancing.chau.local
Click OK.
The Alternate Access Mappings page will display.
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 Seven: How to Run the Load Balancing URL on a Client Computer
- Part Eight: How to Verify that Load on Your Network is Being Correctly Balanced
