Health check page throwing 404 - File or directory not found - NLB configuration

Today I was working on configuring the network load balancer for our web front ends. Let me give you some details on this before I start explaining the issue – NLB configuration can be done in two ways as follows:

1.   Health check file (Recommended one) – running IIS required.

2.   TCP port based health check

I was using the recommended way i.e. first one (health check file). We have 5 web front ends, while doing the configuration; you need to place this file on all the 5 web front ends. Why? – Good question! – If one server goes down then the requests will automatically get routed to the next available server.

Once you have placed the file then you need to browse that file in browser, just to make sure that you are getting the reply like this – http://108.34.45.145/healthcheck.txt

Proper output should be there, if not then there is something wrong in configuration. I faced the same problem as I was getting the reply from one server only and remaining servers were throwing the following error message:

404 - File or directory not found.

HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found the resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable

If the one server is giving me a proper output then the question is why the other servers are not working! There should be some problem in configuration, let me clear – not from the NLB side but from the IIS side.

I checked the IIS of the server where it was working and compare it with the remaining ones but didn’t find any differences.

So I tried browsing the local host site which is by default there in IIS – You should get IIS construction page. I tried browsing this IIS default website from the servers where I am not getting the output and result was same i.e. default website giving me “webpage cannot be found”

Why the default websites giving me error message? – The reason is so simple as they are in stopped status J

The server where it’s working, I checked the status of the default websites and it was in started mode. So the bottom line is - Sometimes solutions are simple but took some time to figure it out.

Resolution for this issue:

If you are working on NLB configuration with respect to health check page then make sure the default web site in started status.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.

If you find a different solution, please report it as a comment to this post. Be sure to double-verify it: undo your solution and verify that the problem comes back, then redo it and verify that the problem goes away.

Product applies to:

1.   SharePoint Server 2010

2.   SharePoint Foundation 2010

3.   SharePoint Server 2013

4.   SharePoint Foundation 2013

5.   SharePoint Server 2007