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Guidelines for Content Distribution and Load Balancing

This topic provides information you should consider when designing your content distribution model and configuration.

The following guidelines apply to setting up a content distribution model with a distribution server, multiple content delivery servers, and a load balancer.

  • The distribution server and all its content delivery servers must have the same application context. For details, see Changing the Application Context URL.
  • Do not assign a content delivery servers to multiple content distribution profiles that contain publications. Plan your distribution profiles in advance, and consider keeping basic configuration and skins in one profile and publications in a second, isolated distribution profile.
  • Before you push a configuration package containing a skin to your content delivery group, thoroughly test the skin on a staging server. After the configuration package reaches the content delivery servers and is applied, the user's experience and the user interface will be updated immediately.
  • Once you have configured your systems into a content distribution model, you should never upload content directly to the content delivery servers by any method. In order to update publication content on the content delivery servers, upload and prepare your content on the distribution server, and rely on the content distribution model to push that new content to the content delivery servers.
  • Your content delivery servers must be configured to use Single Sign-on. For details, see Single Sign-on Using Active Directory. If you are unable to use Single Sign-on technology, you must manage and configure users and groups directly on each of the content delivery servers.
  • If you plan to configure your servers to use a secure connection (HTTPS), you should configure your load balancer to use HTTPS and leave your content delivery servers using HTTP. For details, see Security.
  • Your network architecture or firewall should prevent users from directly accessing the content delivery servers. The only access to the content delivery servers should be through the load balancer.

When planning publications to push to content delivery servers, keep the following in mind:

  • Plan ahead if you want to delete a language version or publication from a content delivery group. For the optimum user experience, ensure that your users are logged off or not viewing the publication when it is deleted from the content delivery servers.
  • If a user does happen to be reading a publication when it is deleted, he or she will receive a 404 error. You may choose to customize the 404 error page to provide meaningful information for your readers. The 404 error page is html/404contentnotfound.html in your skin.

If your users will be able to create forms, you must include a user-generated content server. The following guidelines apply to the set up of this server.

  • For performance reasons, we recommend that the user-generated content server be a standalone server.
  • You should disable auditing on the user-generated content server.