How to Setup Load Balance in SharePoint 2010 Farm

As we know, in medium or large enterprise, there are two or three tires in SharePoint Farm, generally including three kinds server: Data server, App server, WFE server. WFE server is used to handle requests from customers, the frequent requests from a lot of users maybe bring out maximum load to WFE server, so it is necessary to build multiple WFE servers to distribute the load, this post will teach you how to complete the configuration step by step.

It includes three parts.

Part1 Add a WFE server to the current SharePoint Farm. (One has existed in the farm)

Part2 Add the feature Network Balancing and configure the cluster.

Part3 Create an entry in the DNS for the cluster.

Assume one WFE server has been added to your SharePoint farm, now let’s add another one.

1. Install SharePoint in another WFE Server and enter the configuration wizard, connect to an existing server farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Click Next then type database server name, click Retrieve Database Names and select the farm configuration database.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Click Next and input the passphrase which you have specified when you first install the SharePoint Farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Click the Advanced Settings and Select User this machine to host the web site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Click OK to finish the configurations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Now install the feature NLB(Network Load Balancing) in the two WFE(web front end) SharePoint servers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Configure NLB and create a cluster, Go to Start>Administrative Tools>Network Load Balancing Manager.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Right-click Network Balancing node and select New Cluster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9.Connect to one host and add the cluster IP address.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10.Select Multicast, the default is Unicast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11. You can define the port rule, but I leave the default here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12.Add the other WFE server to the cluster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13. Type the host name that to be part of the new cluster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14.Set the priority to be 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15. Click Next, complete the configuration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16.Create an entry in DNS for the cluster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17. Set the binding for the site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18. Modify Alternate Access Mapping for the default site collection from http://spb10wfe1 to http://cluster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now it’s great, all configuration has completed, and you can access you site by the URL http://cluster.