1.3.1. Public URL
The Public URL section of the Create New Web Application page (see Figure 6-15)
lets you configure a public URL; that is, the default URL for users to
access the sites hosted on this Web application. A public URL is used
when configuring multiple front-end servers using the Windows Server
2008 network load-balancing service. The network load-balanced service
enables administrators to create a cluster that will be shared by the
network cards of all SharePoint servers configured in the load-balancing
service configuration. However, in order for your users to connect to
the cluster, you should also define a public URL in the Web application
and in DNS so that the name resolutions match.
The load-balanced URL uses
the default zone for user access, and this zone is matched to the URL
mappings configured for the default zone in the Alternate Access
Mappings Management page. Scrolling further down the Create New Web
Application page displays the Application Pool section as shown in Figure 5.
Application
pools are used to configure the level of isolation between different
Web applications and their hosted sites. Each application pool runs its
own worker process. This means that an error in one worker process will
not affect other worker processes hosting different application
pools. From a planning point of view, it is not necessary to create a
new application pool for every Web application, because Web applications
can share application pools, and each new application pool can end up
consuming up to 800 MB of physical memory very easily when users start
connecting to websites hosted on the Web applications. However, if a
site is critical to your business, you can create a separate application
pool for the site so that there is less of a chance of that Web
application being disrupted by an unstable Web application that resides
in the same application pool.
Although some application
pools are created during the installation, you should create at least
one additional application pool to host the first Web application and
its associated sites. When you create a new application pool, it is
important to use a meaningful and descriptive name to make it easier to
identify them in IIS. This is especially useful in a disaster recovery
scenario when you might have multiple application pools and random port
numbers.
There are two choices for selecting a security account that will be used by the application pool: predefined and configurable, as you can see in the Application Pool section of the Create New Web Application page shown in Figure 6-16.
In most cases, you will want to select the configurable option, because
it gives you the most flexibility for scaling out a server farm.
Following are brief explanations of both application pool options.
Predefined Provides built-in system accounts; local and network service.
Configurable
Allows you to define your own domain user account that will be used by
the application pool to access the necessary services and servers, such
as a SQL Server database. This account should be configured using the
format domain_name\user_name. It also requires the SQL Server database creator and security administrator server role.
Note:
You can create a new account by clicking the Register new managed account link.
1.4. Database Name and Authentication
By default, the database server name displayed in the Database
Name And Authentication section of the Create New Web Application page
is the SQL Server database configured in Central Administration—the one
used when you first installed the product and configured your farm.
However, it is possible to specify a different SQL Server instance for a
new Web application.
When you configure the
database account, it is also recommended that you use Windows
authentication. For security purposes, your SQL Server database instance
is set to accept only Windows authentication by default. However, the
account must have database creator rights in SQL Server and must be
configured using the format domain_name\user_name.
