Configuring session database servers

Version: 8.1

In the xDB, you configure a session state database to track all contact interactions and to maintain visitor session state. Configuring session state is particularly important if you have deployed a multi-server, fully scalable environment with clusters of content delivery or processing servers.

You can configure a session state database on the same server as other roles, such as content delivery, but for better performance and scalability, create a separate session database server.

Depending on which database system you want to use when you configure your session state database, you need to use a session state provider. Sitecore comes with two providers:

  • Sitecore ASP.NET Session State Provider for MongoDB

  • Sitecore ASP.NET Session State Store Provider for Microsoft SQL Server

Note

A dedicated Sitecore instance is not required when configuring a dedicated session state database server.

Sitecore requires that you configure both private and shared session states. You can choose to use the same database for both but to ensure that the system can distinguish between the private and shared session entries, you must remember to configure the sessionType attribute in the web.config file correctly.

Follow these instructions to configure session state providers:

Note

Configure connection strings on any other servers that need to connect to the session state database server.

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