Is there any guideline to make the decision where to host WF: in our own custom windows NT service or inside IIS?
You have the option of 3 different runtimes, WorkflowInvoker, WorkflowApplication and WorkflowServiceHost. In the last case the AppFabrik running on IIS/WAS is a generic host you can use. In general that would be a good choice when doing worklfow services.
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I have an .NET Framework based WebAPI application which is depending on some .NET based components (not support .NET core) and use to deploy on IIS on-premises which works well. Now, we want to leverage the kubernetes (a.k.a k8s) on Google cloud.
But, due to too much dependency on windows OS, is that possible for me to continue using the same application without converting to .NET 5 (which is something impossible due to dependency on some windows based tools) and host on windows based docker container and host on GKE pods?
If yes, do I need to have any windows license?
Can anyone help me in suggesting the best approach for this, if windows based container works with GKE k8s, how can I do these all together. From creating windows based docker image with my existing API application and hosting on GKE k8s.
Thanks in advance.
I am quite new to azure and need a quick pointer to how to host an asp.net website in Azure VM. Thanks for your help in advance.
A little background...
We were using a windows server 2012 R2 and were hosting the site in IIS 6. This was an intranet site. Now we are migrating to public cloud so that it is accessible over internet. For this we have acquired an Azure VM (Windows OS). We have installed Visual studio 2013 and SQL server 2012 here. I have installed azure core SDK too.
Here are my questions:
What do I use instead of IIS to host? (Because I am not able to find any related app in azure VM)
Do I need to buy any more licenses for the same?
Should I host it in IIS only and because it is in public cloud, will it be accessible over internet?
Appreciate your help!
Since you have chosen the Infrastructure as a service ( IaaS) route you have to simply replicate the setup that you have on premises.
if IIS component is not there you just have to enable it in windows features.
If you do not want to use IIS you can explore self hosted asp.net applications.
Since you have chosen the Windows server VM image and created the VM you do not need to pay for anything additional for windows license.
By default only 2 endpoints( ports) will be open in a Windows VM. 1 for remote desktop and other for powershell remoting.
refer this post for enabling endpoints for you hosted applications.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/virtual-machines-windows-classic-setup-endpoints
You have two options basically
Use Azure Paas - Here you would host your existing application as a Cloud service using a web role and a Azure SQL Database. This might mean some changes to the existing application but would need less management from you. You can find the migration steps here
Use Azure Iaas - This is pretty much what you are trying to do. Host your application to a VM and manage all the required software (IIS,Sql server etc) on your own. Although this option might be easier in terms of migrating your application it involves managing the infrastructure on your own. Here is a link on how to install IIS on a Azure VM.
You don't need any additional licenses since you are paying for the VM which includes all required licenses. In case you decide to use SQL Server as Iaas you can also use your existing SQL Server license when running SQL Server on an Azure VM.
I have made an application in asp.net which sends and receive sms, it works very similar to desktop application and it will be installed on servers to send sms alerts, but the problem is if server does not have iis, it will not work. I have seen many apps which when installed, have their own server and port, you do not need to install any IIS, when you just double click it starts running on a special port and works well, similarly visual studio also runs its own port in development mod, so what is the best way to make such solution for an asp.net product.
If you're talking about how to host a service in an application outside IIS, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), which allows you to host a service in a Windows Forms executable, Console Application, Windows service, or IIS.
It's too big a subject to explain fully here, but there's a nice starting point here.
This will allow you to create the host, and allow you to hose services similar to web services, but with more options for how to connect. (http, tcp, etc.)
But it's not an ASP.NET host. For that, you will need a web server that can execute ASP.NET, such as IIS. There's no way to get around the need to have a web server, whether it's one of the many already established, or if you write your own. I believe there are extensions for Apache that allow you to do so via Mono, but I've never used them. Writing your own would be, in my opinion, a waste of time and a bad idea.
The simplest solution by far is to specify that IIS instaled with the appropriate framework is a requirement for using your website.
Edit
However, if you REALY want to write a WinForms app and have it host ASP.NET, it looks like this previous question has an answer that would help. You can use the Cassini web server, the same one that Visual Studio uses.
We have the need to setup a highly available load balanced Windows Server. Is there a guide on how to setup a web farm with NLB configured? Our operations team tried to use the Web Farm Framework 2.2 to create the web farm and then configure windows NLB on the machines but we haven’t managed to get it to work. Have anyone done this before? What’s the best practice and the recommended way of doing this?
Cheers,
The MS recommended way of doing this is by using 2 or more Web Farm Framework 'controller' servers running ARR and windows NLB, and then Primary/Secondary servers below that.
There's details on how to set this up here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/511/achieving-high-availability-and-scalability---arr-and-nlb/
You can also use hardware based load balancers, some have specific support, others will work, but won't integrate nicely into the WFF console.
Details on doing this with an F5 Big-IP load balancer are here: http://blogs.iis.net/gursing/archive/2011/01/21/how-to-integrate-f5-with-web-farm-framework.aspx
You can also just use the standard microsoft NLB with WFF and without ARR, but there doesn't seem to be much documentation on how to do this. I've got it working on a 2 group by:
install windows NLB on both servers and create a standard cluster with a shared IP
installing WFF on one server
setting that server as primary but don't tick the 'ready for load balancing' tickbox (this tickbox really means add this server to the ARR load balancing).
Then add the second server and again don't tick the 'ready for load balancing'
You should then have the config sharing/updating benefits of WFF with the load balancing/redundancy of NLB using only 2 servers.
I have an ASP.NET website which is running currently on IIS. Now I want to move that site to run on Cassini.
What are the advantages of Cassini over IIS? What are its disadvantages?
What are your experiences using Cassini as a production web-server?
As far as I know, you cannot use Cassini in production because it listens for localhost requests only. You will have to modify source code and recompile the webserver by yourself.
Another thing is that IIS is built on top of http.sys kernel-level library for maximum performance. I'm not familiar with the latest Cassini versions but last time I checked, it used slower managed TCP sockets.
If your website is not very popular and Cassini has all the features you need, why not... there is nothing wrong with Cassini. It's simple webserver but it's not the only alternative to IIS.
There is Abyss, UltiDev Cassini and I think a few other open-source servers with ASP.NET support.
UltiDev Web Server Pro is a free, redistributable, light-weight web server with lots of enterprise-level feature for ASP.NET applications (from ASP.NET 1.1 to 4). Unlike Cassini, its design has nothing precluding it from serving Internet-facing applications. Created by UltiDev, the vendor of UltiDev Cassini fork, new UWS Pro is functionally closer to IIS than to Cassini. More screenshots.
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Easy choice: it's simply not possible to use Cassini in production, because it's not accessible from remote machines (it only listens on localhost).
I would say you are better off, going with something proven to handle scaling, like mod_mono on apache if you are looking for alternative servers.
The integrated pipeline, routing, compression and caching features of iis are hard to replicate. But the app pool and failure rapid response stuff is hard to do without knowledge of the OS and the network stack at a root level.
Cassini doesn't claim to be multi threaded or handle any of the advanced e-tags or other header control issues that can be issues with iis, but are also usually set at sensible defaults in later versions of iis.
For the sake of completeness, you could do the older rails-mongrels model, spin up say 10 cassini's on ports 10100 - 10110, then use ngenx or apache to load ballance requests on those threads, and using a monitoring tool to redo requests to new threads when old ones go out to lunch and constantly be restarting 2 or so ports, because you get overloaded.
There is a good comparison of Cassini and IIS here at StackOverflow
There is no possible angle you can look at cassini or any of it's derivatives and consider using it as anything other than a development/testing server.