Share Information on Web Sites with EPiServer Enterprise Edition

How EPiServer Enterprise Edition allows files, documents, and images to be shared between mulitple Web sites.

Introduction

EPiServer Enterprise Edition is a solution that, among other things, shares the same files and stores all information in the same database. Enterprise Edition is mainly intended for environments, where several similar Web sites are set up and want to have the possibility of sharing information. All Web sites can be edited from the same Edit mode and it is possible to link information between the different Web sites.

NOTE: A Web site, as referred to in this white paper, is defined by a unique application instance in Internet Information Services (IIS).

Key Features

Some of the main key features:

• Multiple Web sites are supported with at least 15 Web sites on one server.
• Unique domain addresses for each Web site on EPiServer.
• Possible to maintain all Web sites from one location.
• Database content is reusable between Web sites.
• Files, documents and images can be shared between multiple Web sites, making it possible to have one common user database.

An EPiServer Enterprise license supports 15 Web sites on one server. Extra Web sites are supported with an Enterprise Add-on License, each of which supports 10 Web sites. An Enterprise License can support an arbitrary amount of Add-on Licenses. Web sites on a second server will require a separate Enterprise License (max. 15 Web sites) and a separate Add-on License.

With EPiServer Enterprise you can share material, e.g. images, slide shows, between all the Web sites. It is also very easy to link to information from other EPiServer Enterprise Web sites, if needed. This is more difficult without Enterprise Edition. An Enterprise license is also preferable from a support point of view – several Web sites sharing the same database is not supported by EPiServer Professional.

License Example

The following example demonstrates when EPiServer Enterprise may be more suitable than EPiServer Professional.

An international group of companies wants to set up a product Web site and wants the site to be available in 20 languages, each language supporting product launchings and promotions. The group wants to keep the cost down, while at the same time keeping up the standard and reliability of the Web sites—it is critical that the Web sites have optimal capacity when promotions are run in each country.

An Enterprise license covers 15 of the Web sites, with an Add-on License for the extra 5 Web sites. If the Web sites were divided between two servers, with 10 Web sites on each server, two Enterprise licenses would be required; one on each server.

The EPiServer Enterprise Edition architecture is built around the requirement that at least 15 Web sites can exist on one server. Each EPiServer Enterprise license is used for a maximum 15 Web sites. This means that if you wish to have more than 15 Web sites, you must have more than one Enterprise license. For example, if you have 25 Web sites in one EPiServer, you must have 2 Enterprise licenses.

In order to support multiple sites with a single database, multiple start pages are required.

Local Cache Update

A feature that the Enterprise Edition has is intelligent local cache updates. From a .NET viewpoint, all your enterprise Web sites are completely separate applications, running in their own appDomains. Since all sites share the same database and therefore may be affected by page updates on other sites, the system needs to be able to update page information between all the enterprise Web sites.

If you need to communicate with Web sites running on another server, remote Web sites must be configured in EPiServer to allow them to update cache information between sites. For local updates, the local cache update feature takes care of this without requiring any further configuration. Further information about this is available in EPiServer's technical documentation.

Enterprise Edit Mode

The only visible difference in the Edit mode between EPiServer Enterprise and EPiServer Professional is that in the Enterprise version you can view multiple start pages; one start page for each site registered in the same database.

Linking Data between Web Sites

To make sure that links to files, pages, and images behave correctly, the Edit mode will be redirected to the correct host name when selecting a page that belongs to a site other than the one currently being edited. This will switch the URL shown in the Web browser address bar.

In practice this means, for example, that if you add a hyperlink from a page in the English Web site in the image above with the "Link to page in EPiServer" function to a news listing in the Swedish Web site, you will be redirected to the Swedish site when following the hyperlink in the English site.

Updating Data between Web Sites

EPiServer Enterprise also supports data updating between Web sites. This means that when the Swedish site's news listing from the previous example is updated, the changes will be automatically updated in the English Web site.

Fetch Data from another Web Site

It is possible, via the “Fetch data from” function, to fetch data from another Web site so that it appears in the context of the first Web site.

Upgrade of Enterprise Sites

One of the goals of the EPiServer Enterprise Edition is to create a set of Web sites that are easy to administer with a minimum of overhead. This is one of the reasons that all Enterprise sites on one machine will share a single set of files. If you want to upgrade your Enterprise sites, you only have to run the installation program once to upgrade all enterprise sites.

System Requirements

The system requirements are the same as for EPiServer Professional. The hardware requirements must be scaled up depending on the number of sites and the expected amount of traffic per site.

License Requirements

You need an EPiServer Enterprise license to enable the Enterprise functions. All sites for a single Enterprise license must run on a single server. With the purchase of an EPiServer Enterprise license, you can also request up to three load-balancing licenses. Each site running on the “master” Enterprise license can be deployed on up to three additional load-balancing servers.