How The Microsoft's IIS Plugin adds Massive Value to your Alpha Apps

The Alpha Anywhere Application Server for IIS plugin lets you deploy your Alpha Anywhere applications using Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) server.

Compared to the standalone Alpha Anywhere Application Server, the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin provides massive benefits in terms of speed, load, stability, security and ease of administration. Here is a quick overview of the advantages.

Speed

Speed increases of up to 300%

Our tests have seen speed increases from 40% - 300% compared with using the standalone Alpha Application Server. The IIS plugin is also much better when it comes to serving Audio and Video, since it allows video and audio to play right away, without requiring the user to wait until the entire file is downloaded.

Load

Reduce the numbers of servers you need

IIS and the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin automatically spawns new processes when server load increases, so performance is maintained even as the number of concurrent users increases. This can reduce the number of physical servers you need (and the associated hosting and administration costs) and it and can eliminate the need for a load balancer. Our tests indicate that, depending on the nature of your Alpha application, the number of concurrent users that the same hardware supports can increase 2 - 3 times.

Security

Tightly integrated into the IIS pipeline

the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin is tightly integrated into the IIS pipeline so that authentication, authorization, session management, secure communication (SSL/TLS) and thread and process management are all handled by IIS, which Microsoft keeps updated as new security threats discovered. Authentication and authorization with the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin is also very flexible. You can install membership and role providers in order to share security configurations between multiple servers for the same application, or even across applications. You can store your security information in SQL databases, Active Directory, and other third party providers. You can even choose to put users and groups in a web application configuration file (web.config) for demo applications, and we include a custom role provider in order to simplify creating samples with fixed passwords.

Stability

Application pools and process monitoring

The Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin can take advantage of application pools, which allow multiple applications to be isolated from each other. If one application develops a fault, the other application can keep running smoothly. In addition, IIS constantly monitors processes, and if it finds a process has stopped responding it is automatically restarted so your application resumes functioning without the need for a person to intervene and restart the server.

Administration

Host multiple domains

When your server restarts, either unexpectedly or as a result of scheduled maintenance, the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin can automatically relaunch, without any special configuration, and it does not require the use of a third party program, like Always Up. The Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin allows you to host multiple websites without the need for an additional IP addresses for each site. This reduces costs and administration allowing you to fit more applications on a single server.

Advanced Capabilities

Web sockets

For advanced developers, the Alpha Anywhere IIS plugin allows up to work directly with web sockets, allowing you to build sophisticated communication applications like realtime chat.

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