Set up a Web Farm in WSS 3.0

This post will show you how to set up a Web farm in WSS 3.0. I am assuming that you already have knowledge of WSS 3.0 such as web applications, site collections etc. I also assume that you already have a web application set up in your WSS 3.0 installation.

*Keep in mind that a web application requires a separate "Web Site" in IIS. With this said - you can set up several web applications in one web server - each application will have it's own respective port. The steps to do this is similar to setting up multiple databases within one site collection

1. Setup a content database -
   
   • From the Central Administration Website, go to the Application Management Tab
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   • Click on "Add a content database"
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   • Verify that you're in the right web application, enter the necessary information (database server, db name, authentication, search server etc. then click "OK"
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   • After this process - double check your database server that the job was successful
     


2. Create a site collection-
   
• From the Central Administration Website - Go back to the Application Management Page, and select "Create Site Collection"
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• Verify that you're in the right web application, enter the necessary information
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3. View Site Collections within your application

• To see your web farm with their corresponding databases - go back to Application Management, Under Sharepoint Site Management > click "Site Collection List"
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• On the left hand side you will see you site collections, after clicking on each - notice the corresponding databases in the right hand side (Database Name)
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• And that's it. You have successfully set up a Web farm using the WSS 3.0 central administration web interface
  

WSS 3 administration

We all know WSS 3.0 has made significant changes from its predecessor. One in particular is the Central Administration area. In WSS 3.0, we now have the ability to create IIS websites from the web interface alone. I'm not referring to subsites or site collection - but actually creating a "website" inside IIS. In WSS 2.0 - you must manually create a website in IIS and then "extend" that website from the administration pages. In the new version, you can create: 1) web applications (which is a container of site collections - which requires a unique port, hence a "website" in IIS), 2) site collections within your web applications 3) content databases within the your web applications.

WSS 3.0 has made setting up a farm of websites and databases very easy and straightforward. A big leap from WSS 2.0

WSS 3 Database Names - Headache!

For anyone who has tried installing MOSS 2007 in a web farm - you'll come to notice how the databases the install will create for content is something like this: "SharePoint_AdminContent_fdbaaad6-ab7f-4bce-982c-3441d23fa8de"
(the GUID is appended to a default common name - Sharepoint_AdminContent & GUID)

During the installation you will get prompted on what to name your config db - which is good, but the content db has no prompt. I have tried renaming this by: stopping IIS, renaming the db, going into the "object" table and finding the entry *will not let you change due to the concatenation formula. And you will get the "unknown error" which is a big HEADACHE.

Luckily I found this post by Rickey Whitworth: http://www.whitworth.org/Blog/PermaLink,guid,fa4f11e2-221a-4321-a01e-cd466016d534.aspx

Wish MOSS had an easier fix though.