Load balancing between multiple sites, with same name?

Hi guys.

I was wondering whether the following is possible and what the best/
cheapest approach would be:

I have an server in London and an server in Denver, which is running
our corporate intranet. Both servers are exact duplicated of
eachother, and provide local access to the employees in each location
to improve response performance. Both are running Microsoft Windows
2003 OS, SharePoint 2007 and IIS6.
The users in London access the London server by typing http://intranetUK
and Denver http://intranetUS.

It has been requested that users simply have to type http://intranet
and then land up on their local server. They want to do away with the
http://intranetUK and US urls and work off a single intranet name.

Is there any way of using software to handle this?
Is there a hardware requirement (if so, what do you recommend)?

I look forward to hearing from you.
Col

It could be done with a varied form of Split-DNS,...but in the end it is
impossbile to answer without being as familar with the infrastructure as
those who built it.

You can create a disaster much easier than creating a solution.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Hi guys.
>
> I was wondering whether the following is possible and what the best/
> cheapest approach would be:
>
> I have an server in London and an server in Denver, which is running
> our corporate intranet. Both servers are exact duplicated of
> eachother, and provide local access to the employees in each location
> to improve response performance. Both are running Microsoft Windows
> 2003 OS, SharePoint 2007 and IIS6.
> The users in London access the London server by typing http://intranetUK
> and Denver http://intranetUS.
>
> It has been requested that users simply have to type http://intranet
> and then land up on their local server. They want to do away with the
> http://intranetUK and US urls and work off a single intranet name.
>
> Is there any way of using software to handle this?
> Is there a hardware requirement (if so, what do you recommend)?
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
> Col
>

If US and UK clients are in different AD domains (and therefore have
different DNS suffixes) you can just use a different server alias in DNS,
but I guess you have a reason you can't do that, otherwise you would not be
asking.
If clients are in the same domain you can try Netmask Ordering, in the DNS
Server, Advanced properties, to return a different value of Intranet
depending on the client IP address.
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk


<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Hi guys.
>
> I was wondering whether the following is possible and what the best/
> cheapest approach would be:
>
> I have an server in London and an server in Denver, which is running
> our corporate intranet. Both servers are exact duplicated of
> eachother, and provide local access to the employees in each location
> to improve response performance. Both are running Microsoft Windows
> 2003 OS, SharePoint 2007 and IIS6.
> The users in London access the London server by typing http://intranetUK
> and Denver http://intranetUS.
>
> It has been requested that users simply have to type http://intranet
> and then land up on their local server. They want to do away with the
> http://intranetUK and US urls and work off a single intranet name.
>
> Is there any way of using software to handle this?
> Is there a hardware requirement (if so, what do you recommend)?
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
> Col
>

Thank you Anthony and Phillip.

Yes, both UK and US are using the same AD domain. I was not aware of
Netmask Ordering. Sounds like a good option. I will investigate
further.
The IT manager keeps suggesting we'll need to purchase some sort of
hardware in both locations to direct users to the right location.
Sounds like overkill to me.

One very basic solution I thought of, is to make an entry in the
user's "hosts" file. So, if they type "intranet", it redirects to the
correct IP Address. Problem is, some of them travel between UK and US
with laptops, so will need to have the host file update when they get
to the alternate location, to avoid slow performance. So, I suggested
to alter the "Windows Logon Script" to check the entry in the host
file and alter depending on the users current IP. But, that is not the
ideal solution of course.

Thanks again.

Hosts file is a good solution too, but not scalable of course.
If he wants hardware, let him have hardware! You don't really need the
second SharePoint server at all. This is an ideal situation for a hardware
WAN caching server like Certeon.
Another solution would be to implement a proxy server at both locations.
Then each proxy would direct Intranet to a different server.
Anthony -
http://www.airdesk.co.uk




<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Thank you Anthony and Phillip.
>
> Yes, both UK and US are using the same AD domain. I was not aware of
> Netmask Ordering. Sounds like a good option. I will investigate
> further.
> The IT manager keeps suggesting we'll need to purchase some sort of
> hardware in both locations to direct users to the right location.
> Sounds like overkill to me.
>
> One very basic solution I thought of, is to make an entry in the
> user's "hosts" file. So, if they type "intranet", it redirects to the
> correct IP Address. Problem is, some of them travel between UK and US
> with laptops, so will need to have the host file update when they get
> to the alternate location, to avoid slow performance. So, I suggested
> to alter the "Windows Logon Script" to check the entry in the host
> file and alter depending on the users current IP. But, that is not the
> ideal solution of course.
>
> Thanks again.
>