Add new WFE to existing farm

Question

I have a SharePoint 2016 OnPremise three server Farm:

• Front-end with Distributed Cache
• Application with Search
• SQL Database

I added a second Application with Search and it seems to work fine. I added a second Front-end with Distributed Cache, but when I open http://localhost I get the error SomeThing went wrong and in the ULS I find:

• Cannot find site lookup info for request Uri http://localhost/SitePages/Homepage.aspx.
• Cannot find site lookup info for request Uri http://localhost/.
• Alternate access mappings have not been configured. Users or services are accessing the site http://portal with the URL http://localhost. This may cause incorrect links to be stored or returned to users. If this is expected, add the URL http://localhost as an AAM response URL. For more information, see: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=114854"/>
• DelegateControl: Exception thrown while adding control 'ASP._controltemplates_15_metadatanavtree_ascx': System.IO.FileNotFoundException
• DelegateControl: Exception thrown while adding control 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.PortalSiteMapDataSource': System.IO.FileNotFoundException

Do I really have to configure the AAM? If yes, how? Actually I have a DNS entry, which points from http://portal to the old WFE. Shouldn't http://localhost work on both instances? When I navigate to http://portal it works on both WFE, but I suppose each call goes on the old WFE. If I click on browse in the IIS, I expect the SharePoint opens as usual. Right?

The purpose is that the new WFE is going to replace the old one, but in order to be sure that everything is working fine, the idea was to keep both for some weeks.

Answer 1

SharePoint does not automatically respond to a specific hostname. If you want to test, you can add portal to your hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts) pointing portal to the IP of the new FE.

Once you determine the FE is functional, you can then configure your load balancer in front of SharePoint to route traffic between the two FEs, as appropriate.