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I am building a WCF Service, and for optimum connectivity for the users, I was going to run it on 3 or 4 servers on different internet connections. How would I setup the client to connect to the service, either select one by random, or a designated server. If its the former, if the service is down for whatever reason, can it automatically move onto the next one?

topherg
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If you want to do it without purchasing a hardware based load balancer, you can do this via Windows Network Load Balancing, your clients will point to a virtual IP which will be distributed to multiple servers inside your network. There are many load balancing solutions that come at a price, but this one can be accomplished given you have a windows infrastructure with a couple of servers.

Ta01
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  • Thats great for the server side, but how can it be done for on the actual WCF Client, especially as this won't work cross connection, and the system needs to intelligently re-assign the connection based on the users interaction. – topherg Dec 24 '11 at 20:12
  • Yes it will. See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730128.aspx and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/475076/load-balancing-error-with-wcf-service-nlb . You can google WNLB and WCF and there are tons of examples out there. I wonder who downvoted this answer.. : / – Ta01 Dec 24 '11 at 22:02
  • It can support redirecting the user to a separate server after the initial connection is made? It was downvoted? Already got my upvote for a useful serverside setup for nlb – topherg Dec 25 '11 at 18:42
  • @cgoddard Can it support redirecting the user to a separate server after the initial connection is made? Did you find any other solution? – LCJ Mar 15 '13 at 13:52