Question

My web application have a chat app module built on SignalR hub.

The app will have 1000+ concurrent users. I want to host the Chat Module on a separate app pool to separate it from my main application so that SignalR does not bottleneck my main application.

I’m not sure how to go about it. I’ve built a simple Chat system (much like Google Talk) tied to my Main Web project using Hub class and client side code resides in Site Master since it will be common across the application.

i also want to be able to call Hub method outside the Hub class. For example, an admin might assign certain task to an user from admin panel. So, from the Controller method after completing service operation (task assignment) successfully, I want to send a SignalR message to that particular user. Should I be using Hub or Persistence connection to achieve both the goal? Host SignalR on a different port? I’d appreciate some guidance on this. Thanks!

Answer 1

Not that I think you necessarily have to do this, but I can understand the desire to separate. To do this you would have to have your MVC application call hub methods as if it was a SignalR client itself. You can either do this by putting separate methods on the same hub or by adding a secondary hub which exists solely for this kind of inter-app communication.

I would probably use the latter approach of having a second hub because you can secure it differently. If you go this route, you would simply get the HubContext for the primary hub and make whatever calls you want/fire whatever signals you want to it. That might look something like this:

public MyInterAppCommunicationHub : Hub
{
    public void SendSystemAlert(string message)
    {
       HubContext myPrimaryHubContext = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<MyPrimaryHub>();

       myPrimaryHubContext.Clients.systemAlert(message);
    }
}