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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T21:12:51+00:00

We’ve currently got the current server set up for a site: Server 1: Admin

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We’ve currently got the current server set up for a site:

  • Server 1: Admin System & Database
  • Server 2: Public site
  • Server 3: Public Site

Server 2 and 3 are managed using the Windows Network Load Balancing system. They are both running copies of the public site code.

The sites rely heavily on sessions because they work with user logins, my question is this:

How do I retain state between servers?

The web.config for the public sites currently look like this:

<sessionState mode="StateServer" cookieless="false" timeout="40" stateConnectionString="tcpip=localhost:42424"/>

Surely it’s just a case of changing “localhost” to the I.P of where I want to store the session? I’m thinking of using the Database server to store session, so it would look like this:

<sessionState mode="StateServer" cookieless="false" timeout="40" stateConnectionString="tcpip=databaseserverIP:42424"/>

Would this be wise?

I’ve found lots of conflicting documentation on the subject and would appreciate anyone giving an insight into how they’ve done it before/ would do it.

Also (while I’m here!), the admin system allows you to upload images for articles. I was thinking of setting up a virtual directory on servers 2 and 3, which would point to a network share mapping to the upload directory on the admin site, is there any reason why this would be frowned upon?

Apologies for my ignorance, this is uncharted territory for me!

Thanks, Sean

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Depends on what State Service you are wanting.

    Generally in a load-balanced scenario, you’d go for SQL Server Session, or ASP.NET State service.

    Each has its pro’s/con’s (SQL Server Session requires serialization/deserialization, but maintains state if the server falls over, ASP.NET State does not maintain state if the server fails over but is much faster due to no serialization/deserialization).

    Regardless, consider hosting the service on a seperate, independant machine – so its not fighting for resources with other processes.

    A discussion on the two needs further research on your part – as you whether availability or speed is your primary concern.

    Keep in mind if you want to share session between web servers (ie a webfarm), you’ll need to update the machineKey settings for each server to be identical.

    Here’s a good article on ASP.NET Session State (and the machineKey issue i mentioned).

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