If the files are being handled programmatically, pull them as byte[] directly from the database.
Once I tried to hookup a way to serve the files directly from the DB through IIS, and it was a total failure. By the time I had figured out getting all the various headers right, I was still running into some weird caching issue that would corrupt the request at random intervals.
So now, if the files are static hosting assets, I will initialize a ‘cache/‘ folder on the local filesystem (for that machine on the web-farm) when the first request comes in and just read all those files back into the local file system for the web server to handle.
The only remaining concern is refreshing the cache when files change in the DB.
Once I tried to hookup a way to serve the files directly from the DB through IIS, and it was a total failure. By the time I had figured out getting all the various headers right, I was still running into some weird caching issue that would corrupt the request at random intervals.
So now, if the files are static hosting assets, I will initialize a ‘cache/‘ folder on the local filesystem (for that machine on the web-farm) when the first request comes in and just read all those files back into the local file system for the web server to handle.
The only remaining concern is refreshing the cache when files change in the DB.