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I have a windows server 2008 R2 running IIS 7.5. I also consider getting another dedicated windows server 2008 R2 to set up a web farm framework 2.1.

Which steps do I need to follow?

2 servers are enough for this or do I need at least 3 servers?

tugberk
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The purpose of the Web Farm Framework is to run your website(s) in a "farm" for scale and availability. Technically you can create a Server Farm that only contains one server and at least in that scenario you will already be set to load-balance/fail-over when you get your next server up and running.

However, the minimum number of servers needed to use the Web Farm Framework is 2. One server will act as the "Controller Server" and the other server will act as the "Primary Server" (meaning it is the first server in your farm). All other servers you add after that will be considered the Secondary Servers.

Also, though I wouldn't recommend it, you could do all this on one server using Hyper-V and virtualize the Primary and Secondary servers. You could even make the one machine simply a host and create ALL the servers in the virtual environment using Hyper-V (or other virtualization products).

brettbaggott
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  • Technically, the controller and primary servers can be on the same server so you really only need one plus any secondary servers. However, it is recommended to have them on separate machines because if a platform provisioning does a software install that requires a reboot then your controller server will unnecessarily go down too (see [ScottGu's related response in the comments section of his WFF post](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/08/introducing-the-microsoft-web-farm-framework.aspx#7607597)). – Ray Feb 08 '12 at 18:24