MCMS 2002 configuration questions
We are currently working on an extranet redesign project using MCMS 2002, and are running up against some significant archtecture questions/issues. First a little background:
Our current hosting environment consists of:
- 4 production load-balanced web servers (2 processor, Win2k3 enterprise)
- 1 primary database server (4 processor, SQL2000, Win2k3 enterprise) used by the 4 production servers
- 1 staging/testing server (2 processor, Win2k3 enterprise)
- 1 staging/testing databse server (2 processor, Win2k3 enterprise) used by the 1 staging/testing server
- A mix of miscelanous 2 processor machines for various other purposes
Please note that this does not include the various developer machines/systems, and this environment does not currently include MSCMS
Now a little more about the project. We are trying to develop an extranet using MCMS 2002 that has a role-based security, using active directory as the repository for user information. The plan is to have the redesigned extranet site on all 4 production web servers, along with a client-review/stage environment on our staging server.
Based on this setup, I'm trying to understand the architecture/licensing options I have availble. Looking through the various Microsoft docs related to the issue, we can configure one of our primary web servers as the read/write server, and configure the rest as read-only servers. We can also have the staging environment act as a read-only server, since that environment is not where the "management" of the content is ocurring (it is happening via authorized users on the production read/write server).
And this is where my licensing questions start to come up. Looking at this solution, do I have to buy 5 2-processor licenses for MCMS? That seems a little excessive, since that equates to $300,000 in licensing costs. I've had some discussions with various consultants, and one option that has been discussed is the possibility of just having one MCMS server with all the content management/data on it, and then writing a web service wrapper for the MCMS API's do deliver content to the rest of the web sites from that single MCMS server. This seems (from a licensing standpoint) to be a much better solution, as it only required a single 2-processor license for the software, but I haven't been able to find any information as to how to implment this kind of a solution.
Does anyone have experience configuring MCMS in a similar environment? I'd really like to fully understand my options here, since it seems a little insane to require such a hefty amount of licensing for a solution like this.
Thanks in advance for any help!
