I have a simple DNN site that does  not allow users to upload files anywhere (i..e; so content shouldn't change based on user actions).

 I have a web farm running 3 instances of IIS each running an identification configuration of DNN.  They of course all point to the same DNN database.

 I have enabled ASP.NET SessionState in the web.config of all these sites and pointed all three to the same SessionState database.

I have NOT turned on any DNN webfarm capabilities nor have I turned on anything special to web farms in IIS.

Now I place a module on the page and then I delete it and its gone.  Refresh the page a few times at it comes back.  Refresh again its gone again.  Clealy this module content is getting cached somewhere on the file system.  I go into the module settings (when it appears again) and turn off the cacheing and it seems to be really gone this time.

However, I have a Discussion Forum module on the same page and it keeps showing stale content everythird screen refresh.  I change the module settings to not use a cache provider and save but it has a red box beside it saying it is "inherited".  Save the settings and go back in and they aren't sticking.   I look at the page  settings and turn of cacheing on it but, no matter how I try and I can't get rid of stale forum content (i.e.; thread view counts) coming and going as I refresh the page.

I am just not understanding how to control the cacheing here.  How do people work iwth DNN in a web farm with regards to page/module cacheing? Is that what the 'web farm' setting on the host level  takes care of?  Essentially I just want to disable any kind of cacheing on the site so that I can get a consist page each time I refresh.  I can try an optimize later.

Thanks,
Rod

Wes, thanks for your reply

I read with interest the following paragraph in the datasprings post you pointed me to:

 <<If your application does not have major file writing operations you can also store the files locally on the two servers and remove the file server from the configuration. This server setup uses file replication to store the files across all front-end servers and any file change on one of the servers is replicated across all servers. This scheme is not suitable if your servers need a lot of file updates and changes because of the extra load that will impose.>>

This struck me as interesting as this is pretty much my scenario.  That is I have no shared storage for the web farm - each node has the exact same configuration, and almost the entire site is "readonly".   That is, my website has only two places where the user can "upload" anything:

1)  Their Account profile "avatar"
2) When they post on my Discussion Forum (running the standard DNN Forum module).

Coincidentally these are the only two places where I see a stale data problem across my 3 node web farrm cluster.

I would like to leave my configuration the way it is and simply address these two scenarios if I can.  I was hoping to be able to turn off completely any kind of file based caching for the Forums module.  I could live with DNN hitting the database each and every time forum information is displayed or posted.  Is there a way to do this?

As well is there anyway to tell the social aspect of DNN to use the database only for the full user profile?  Right now, the user can upload an avatar file and it resides in the file system causing my other 2 nodes to be out of sync.  If I have to I will remove the ability to upload an avatar - but if there is a way to avoid this....

Can anyone think of anywhere else on a standard DNN site that "files" would be created on a server during the regular course of a user browsing around your site?

Thanks for any and all ideas.
Rod