Setting Up Application Request Routing Rules and Load Balance Policies

Set up Application Request Routing (ARR) rules to provide load balancing for IIS servers used as relay server hosts. Use load balance policies to configure which algorithm the ARR server should use.

  1. On any IIS server that hosts a relay server, configure routing rules:
    1. Use the IIS Management console to open Routing Rules for the Web Server Farm.
    2. Check these boxes:
      • User URL Rewrite to inspect incoming requests and rewrite application request URLs as required.
      • Enable SSL offloading to perform all communication between the ARR server and the relay servers in clear text, even for HTTPS requests from clients to the ARR server. When both the ARR server and the relay servers are deployed within a trusted network, such as within the same datacenter, enabling SSL offloading does not sacrifice security. Also, enabling this feature can further help to maximize the server resources on the application servers, since they do not have to spend cycles in encrypting and decrypting requests and responses.
  2. Set up the load-balancing policy:
    1. Use the IIS Management console to open Load Balancing for the Web Server Farm.
    2. Change the default algorithm to Weighted round robin.
  3. Validate that the Web server farm is set up for load balancing:
    1. In the IIS Management console Connections pane, click Server Farms > MyFarmName > Servers.
    2. In the Servers list, check that all servers display Yes in the Ready for Load Balancing column.
  4. Verify that requests are balanced equally among the relay servers:
    1. In the IIS Management console's Connections pane, click MyFarmName.
    2. Double-click Monitoring and Management.
    3. Review the Load Balancing column's percentages and ensure each server is equally weighted.
Parent topic: Configuring the Relay Server IIS Host for Load Balancing