Cannot access site collection on new web server hosting SharePoint

Question

I want to add another Web Server to host my SharePoint Server 2013 sites. What I want to achieve is that even if one of the servers is down, the sites are still accessible via the second web server.

I followed this tutorial. Installing SharePoint to another Web Server was done with ease. But I have a problem. I can access Central Admin using both servers fine (e.g. http://server1:55555/ and http://server2:55555/), but I cannot access the Site Collections using the second server (e.g. http://server1:54321/sites/teamsite/ is working but http://server2:54321/sites/teamsite/ is not). I checked with IIS Manager and the Applications and websites on Server1 are the same with Server2, so I am not sure where to the error is coming from. Is there any additional configuration I need to do to achieve my goal?

Answer 1

There are a couple of things to check:

1. Check the alternate access mappings for the web application and ensure that all of the URLs over which you want access to the web application on are listed.
2. Check the IIS bindings configuration for the web application on each server. If you've created a web application without a host header (i.e. just an IP address-port pair) then this should be the same on both servers.

The setup that you have is not best practice, but is fairly common. The best way to get this setup correctly is to change the URL on which the web application is accessed to something that doesn't contain a server name (e.g. http://sharepoint.domain.com instead of http://server1), then you can add network load balancing in front of the web application and use both servers to serve pages to end users rather than only one at once. This can be done either by adding a new alternate access mapping and IIS bindings, or by detaching the content databases from the web application, recreating the web application on a different URL and then reattaching the content databases.

Answer 2

I had this issue too last week. But first, check following:

1. DNS, has to point to the webserver
2. Alternate Access Mappings (AAM), through Central Administration (http://appserver:port/_admin/AlternateUrlCollections.aspx)
3. Managed Path set? (CA > Manage Web Applications > Managed Path Ribbon Button)
4. Any errors in Eventlog on the webserver? (SQL DB Errors, DB not accessible?)
5. IISReset done?

In my case I had to run a psconfig as hinted in the SharePoint Health Analyzer. Check your Health Analyzer, maybe you'll find the solution there.