Questions about using Percussion to publish to multiple IIS servers. Is there a special configuration that I have to use? We have mapped shares for the two servers to the percussion server.
Hi Matt,
There are special considerations when implementing a configuration where you would be publishing to two locations, as only one pub servers defined in CM1 can point to your DTS server for dynamic content. In other words, you could publish static HTML pages to multiple locations (although this becomes difficult to workflow, as a page listed as “Live” will only really be live on one server), but the DTS metadata used for auto-lists (page auto-list, blog list, archive) will only get published when using the pub server set as your “Publish now default.”
Can you give me a more detailed overview of what you envision your server topology would look like? Also, can you tell me if you are using widgets that rely on DTS metadata such as auto-lists?
I am using widgets that use DTS metadata. We have a load balancer in place and two IIS servers behind it. We have this in place for backup if a server goes down. We would like to publish our content to both IIS servers.
Matt,
For the reasons I outlined, publishing to two locations really is not recommended. Customers running their site off of IIS who have a second server in place for load balancing typically make use of a built-in Windows program called Robocopy, using it to mirror their IIS site’s root folder from one server to another. You can read more about Robocopy in these two Microsoft Technet articles:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ma…
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/li…
There are also plenty of third-party tools (automated back-up tools, for instance) that achieve the goal of automatically copying full directories from one machine to another, but most customers I know use Robocopy.
Okay. Is there anything special I have to do on my IIS server before I setup the path in Percussion to publish there?
Hi Matt,
Once you have an FTP account setup on your IIS server that can write to you IIS site’s root directory, you will want to add a Default Document type of “index” without an extension to both of your IIS instances. CM1 publishes its pages with a content type declared in the meta-data, but to be thorough, you can also add a MIME type definition of extension “.” and MIME type “text/html”. Of course, if you have configured CM1 to publish your pages with an HTML extension (as I’m sure you know, CM1 publishes its pages without an extension by default), then you won’t need to worry about any of this.
Okay. I’ve got a ticket in so maybe we could do a remote session so that myself and my sys admin are on the same page.
To add to this, another Windows Server tool customers have used for this type of configuration is called DFSR:
@NathanielW - Okay. We got our FTP setup and I published to one of the IIS servers. I went to the server and configured it like you said with the mime type and the index as the Default Document. I rebooted IIS and it won’t let me view the site. I get a 404 error.
Hey Matt,
Can you check and verify that, at the root folder you have specified for your site in IIS, there is an “index” page? Note that, if you elect to use Percussion’s folder structure when publishing (which is selected by default), your site will be published to [ftp_root][mysite.com]apps\ROOT, and this newly created “ROOT” folder will need to be the folder you specify as your site’s root folder in IIS.
I specified that the publishing use my custom publishing. I have index set at same level as where all the content is. I have also set the MIME type too.
Hey Matt,
Can you confirm that you have restarted your site in IIS and cleared your browser cache after making these changes? If you have and are still encountering the 404 errors, I would be happy to setup a call with you to look at this closer.
I have done all of those items.
Thanks for checking. I have created a support ticket for this issue, through which we can take a closer look into what might be happening here. Please check your inbox for that notification.
The issue was resolved on our call. For customers with similar issues, it appears that, in IIS 7.5, the MIME type extension for pages without an extension should be set to “.” rather than “.*”
Have you guys updated your documentation to give better help content for IIS versions newer than IIS7? At the very least these documents should be modified with notes regarding newer versions of IIS. Just a thought because I had spent unnecessary time trying to get the “*” to work on IIS7.5… prior to finding this post. Thanks.
Hi Paul,
Can you point me to where you found this reference on our Help site? Our most recent IIS configuration document does include this note:
Once you’ve pointed me to the documentation I will be sure to get it updated.
Oops, sorry, I had meant to include the link in my previous post. here it is:
Thanks, Paul. I have updated the doc.