IIS Applications Store Data Directories on Alibaba Cloud SMB File Systems for Elastic Storage

By Zhou Qin, from Alibaba Cloud Storage Team

Alibaba Cloud SMB file systems have an ultra-large capacity and the capability of elastic expansion, but they lag behind virtual machine system disks in terms of compatibility and performance. According to this characteristic, the data of an IIS application can be stored in a file system on the cloud while the application core is still running on a system disk. The IIS application can be connected to the directory of an Alibaba Cloud SMB file system through the IIS virtual directory feature. This article describes how to configure an IIS virtual directory to an Alibaba Cloud SMB file system for massive storage expansion.

Causes

Alibaba Cloud SMB file systems support IIS applications. An article published on the official website demonstrates how to move a website directly to an Alibaba Cloud SMB file system in detail.

However, applications running on IIS vary widely. As an emerging product, Alibaba Cloud SMB file systems may have compatibility issues in some cases. As a result, some functions of some libraries of applications cannot run properly, causing problems, such as logon failures for websites.

On the other hand, although an SMB file system has the advantages of storage space (such as ultra-large capacity and elastic expansion), the file system lags behind a block device in terms of performance. The file system can only operate at the level of files. Therefore, file operations cause many metadata operations, and many small files will also degrade the performance of the file system. However, a block device reads, writes, and caches data each time based on the 4K alignment principle, and metadata is only available for a whole block device. Thus, the performance of the block device is more stable and easier to tune.

According to this characteristic, the data of an IIS application can be stored in a file system on the cloud, which is convenient for data expansion and is not limited by the size of a system disk. The application core is still running on the system disk. The IIS virtual directory feature is used to connect the IIS application to the directory of the Alibaba Cloud SMB file system.

The section below describes how to configure an IIS virtual directory to an Alibaba Cloud SMB file system in detail to implement massive storage expansion.

Steps

1. Please refer to an article on the official website, Use Windows IIS to Access Apsara File Storage NAS, to complete IIS installation, IIS website configuration, and other steps.

2. Create a subdirectory, such as \xxxx-xxxx-shanghai.nas.aliyuncs.commysharewwwtest, and copy test.asp to the \xxxx-xxxx-shanghai.nas.aliyuncs.commysharewwwtest

3. Open the IIS management page, right-click the Default Website and select Add Virtual Directory.

4. Enter the alias test and the physical path \xxxx-xxxx-shanghai.nas.aliyuncs.commysharewwwtest

5. Access the website http:\localhosttesttest.asp from a web browser. You can see the display result of test.asp:

Precautions

The example above applies to Windows Server 2012. The configuration of the IIS virtual directory will be slightly different for different Windows Servers and configurations. Please refer to the article on the official website that describes the steps of configuring physical paths for processing configuration.
Generally, the data directory, such as /Upload directory, can be placed on NAS SMB, and the effect is good.

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IIS Applications Store Data Directories on Alibaba Cloud SMB File Systems for Elastic Storage

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