<spepi@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I have a question. We currently have a single website that we are hosting
>in house. IIS6, Server2003, NLB, and DFS. The DFS replicates the root web
>folder between the 2 servers.
>
>The previous administrator set up 3 individual webs for this single site.
>Web1, Web2, Web3. I have configured another Test website of the same
>configuration, but only using 1 web called Webtest on each server, using
>every IP address associated with that particular machine.
>
>Web-Test1 - 192.168.1.60 - 192.168.1.61 - NLB IP of 192.168.1.65
>
>Web-Test2 - 192.168.1.62 - 192.168.1.63 - NLB Ip of 192.168.1.66
>
>I emailed the old admin and asked him why he set up the website with 3
>individual webs.
>
>This was his answer.
>
>+++++++
>
>The need for three sites had to do with the fact that once a site is
>associated with NLBS, you can't get to it via the actual IP address, and that
>there are two NICS in each server. If I remember correctly, the mapping is
>something along the lines of
>
>
>192.168.1.20 is the 1st NIC in webserver1
>
>192.168.1.21 is the 2nd NIC in webserver1
>
>192.168.1.22 is the 1st NIC in webserver2
>
>192.168.1.23 is the 2nd NIC in webserver2
>
>
>On both web servers, WEB1 is assigned to IP address 192.168.1.25
>
>On both web servers, WEB2 is assigned to IP address 192.168.1.26
>
>On both web servers, WEB3 is assigned to "all unassigned", which will
>translate to the IP addresses assigned to the NICs.
>
>
>It's necessary to do it this way because all site management and updates
>need to be done via an update to one of the NIC IP addresses. Both FrontPage
>and Dreamweaver consistently failed when trying to update the site via one of
>the NLBS addresses. Once one of the sites was associated with an NLBS address
>(whether directly or through the "all unassigned" umbrella), I could no
>longer update it. So, basically, even though they're all pointing to the same
>folder on disk, within IIS, WEB1 and WEB2 are used for answering HTTP queries
>to the site (web browsing), while WEB3 is used for updating the site.
>
>
>One thing to note is that the web directories on the two web servers are
>currently configured for Distributed File System replication, so that any
>changes you make to the web pages on one server will be replicated to the
>other, and the sites will remain in sync.
>
>+++++++
>
>My question is, does this have to be setup this way? The one I setup in my
>test seems to work just fine