[mapserver-users] Web Server Tricks... Kind of Off Topic

[Hankley, Chip]

I am by no means a guru at configuring / working out web server hardware /
networking issues... and could use a little guidance.

Our main webserver is pretty much a dog. We're running a 200 MHz dual
processor server w/ win2K and IIS... it handles a number of things for our
company (besides mapserver)... and it is S L O W (i know... 200 MHz,
Win2K... big part of the problem).

Anyway... my options are limited b/c of internal politics and the like - so
Linux is out, as well as my own dedicated server.

What I'm wondering is if there is some way to "pass-through" my mapserver
requests to a more powerful box within the organization. For instance, a MS
request would come in, and instead of being processed on that server, the
actual mapserver work (the process of rendering the image from the raw GIS
data) would occur on another more powerful machine, and then the image
either would be passed back for service to the client, or would be read
directly from that machine. Is such a thing possible? What would be the
performance implications of such a trick?

I think this is kind of how MO IMS and ArcIMS work in that there is a "Map
Server" that runs as a service... not necessarily on the web server.

TIA

Chip Hankley