Shared ASP.Net

Service Description

The Shared ASP.Net environment is a Windows Server 2016 system running IIS 10. It supports all versions of ASP.Net through ASP.Net v4.7 as well as Classic ASP. The QA (quality assurance) and Production environments are clustered to minimize downtime.  As such, it is an excellent choice for hosting plain HTML, Classic ASP, and ASP.Net-based web sites in a high-availability Windows environment.

Web Services’ Shared ASP.Net offering can support any URL hostable by Web Services, provides access to Purdue IT’s supported database systems (MS SQL Server,  and Oracle), and participates in the BoilerAD Active Directory domain. Each web site and application is run in its own application pool with a unique identity to provide for separation of privileges.

Developers have Windows file sharing access to the Development server and use a web-based Deploy Tool to copy their code to the QA and Production systems.

Getting Started

Web Services offers Shared ASP.Net hosting to any college, department, or business unit of Purdue University that requires hosting of a Windows-based web site for the support of the business of the University. It is expected that the customer is familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and optionally with classic ASP or ASP.Net programming. We are unable to provide detailed assistance with these topics.

At the present time, there is no charge for a Shared ASP.Net web site.

Requesting a Shared ASP.Net Web Site

To request a Shared ASP.Net web site, please contact Web Services to open a ticket. In this email, please include:

  • Owner – This is the person ultimately responsible for administrative decisions related to the site. They may or may not also be a developer.
  • Developers – These are the people who should have access to the Development server and the Deploy Tool to copy the site to QA and Production.
  • URL options – These should be the desired URLs, in order of preference, for your new site. All URLs are subject to various levels of approval so providing alternatives helps avoid a certain amount of back-and-forth discussion.
  • What version of the ASP.Net runtime to use – ASP.Net v4.0 is the default run time.

Once your site has been created, please see our Getting Started Guide for Shared ASP.Net for detailed information about how to connect to the servers, deploy your site, etc.

About Service Tiers

The Shared ASP.Net service is provided in three tiers — Development, QA (Quality Assurance), and Production.

Development

  • The URL is usually your Production URL with “dev.” added to the beginning. For example, dev.www.purdue.edu/itap/webservices is the Development version of www.purdue.edu/itap/webservices.
  • Used for initial site development and updates.
  • Only accessible on campus or via the campus VPN.

QA

  • The URL is usually your Production URL with “qa.” added to the beginning. For example, qa.www.purdue.edu/itap/webservices is the QA version of www.purdue.edu/itap/webservices.
  • Used to test your site in a “near-production” environment without jeopardizing your production site.
  • Only accessible on campus or via the campus VPN.

Production

  • This is your live, Production site.
  • Accessible to the world unless you request otherwise.

Developer Resources

Local Resources

Remote Resources

HTML, CSS, JavaScript

ASP, ASP.Net

Other Purdue IT Teams

Getting Help

The Shared ASP.Net Service is a service for customers familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and optionally classic ASP and ASP.Net programming. Due to the fact that ASP.Net can do a wide variety of things and that Web Services does not have ASP.Net developers on staff, our ability to offer support is limited to the server environment. There is little we can do to help with coding or interface issues. However, we do offer support for the following:

  • Changing the IIS/ASP.Net configuration to support a setting that cannot be accomplished within the site’s web.config
  • Providing copies of logs that cannot be achieved by customer means
  • Answering questions about the environment
  • Restoring files from backups
  • Basic troubleshooting to rule out server issues
  • Maintaining redirects, directory security, etc.

Support Requests

Please submit all requests for support by contacting Web Services to open a ticket. If the issue involves a production service outage, please follow the instructions in the automated response to escalate the priority of the ticket.

When opening a support ticket, please provide the following (at a minimum):

  • What exactly are you needing?
  • What is the URL of the site/application?
  • If there is an error or malfunction:
    • What is the error?
    • How can we reproduce the error?
    • What is the expected result?
    • A screen capture that includes the URL in the browser can also help.
  • If you are requesting a file to be restored from backups, please be sure to provide:
    • The full path to the file(s) or folder(s) to be restored
    • The date and time the last known good file(s)/folder(s) existed
    • Whether you would like us to overwrite the file(s)/folder(s) or place them in an alternate location

Service Specifications

Software Versions

The Shared ASP.Net service is provided on a Windows Server 2016 platform with:

  • Microsoft IIS v10
  • Classic ASP
  • ASP.Net through v4.7
  • Microsoft SQL Server Native Driver
  • Oracle 12.2.0 Database Client

Database Support

Database connections to Purdue-IT-hosted databases (MS SQL Server and Oracle) are tested and known good. Connections to departmental database servers that are compatible should work. Drivers for MySQL databases may be available on request.

Microsoft Access databases are neither supported nor allowed on the Shared ASP.Net servers.

Server Specifications

Servers are configured with:

  • Development: 1 CPU, 10G RAM
  • QA: 1 CPU, 12G RAM (2 servers)
  • Production: 2 CPU, 24G RAM (2 servers)

Memory and processor usage is monitored and will be increased as needed.

Patching and Backups

Microsoft releases their patches and updates for Windows on the 2nd Tuesday of each month (known as “Patch Tuesday”).

  • Non-production (development and qa) systems are patched on the Thursday following Patch Tuesday with clean-up patching (for systems that need manual intervention) occurring on the Saturday after that.
  • Production systems are patched on the Saturday 11 days after Patch Tuesday, with clean-up patching occurring on the following Saturday.

System backups are performed on a daily basis and are retained for a minimum of 14 days.

Accessing Firewalled Services

If you will be connecting from your Shared ASP.Net site  to a service that is protected by a firewall (a departmental database, for example), you will need to send a request to whoever maintains your firewalls to allow the following IP addresses through:

Public and Zoned IP addresses of Shared ASP.Net Systems
Server Tier Server Name Public Address Zoned Address
Development wdvwebasp03.www.purdue.edu 128.210.23.31 172.30.196.31
Quality Assurance wqvwebasp03a.www.purdue.edu
wqvwebasp03b.www.purdue.edu		 128.210.7.62
128.210.7.63		 172.30.140.62
172.30.140.63
Production wpvwebasp03a.www.purdue.edu
wpvwebasp03b.www.purdue.edu		 128.210.7.70
128.210.7.71		 172.30.140.70
172.30.140.71