Administration: Turn on database storage for configuration files

Sitefinity CMS configurations are stored in .config files. By default, these files are located in folder ~/App_Data/Sitefinity/Configuration/. When you have multiple Windows Azure instances or you have a Network Load Balancing with many nodes, you need to have the same configurations for all instances, since Sitefinity CMS does not handle .config file synchronization between different instances. You can store the configurations of different servers in the database. This way, all servers will use the same configurations. 

To turn on database storage for configuration files, perform the following:

1. Open you web.config file.
2. Uncomment the following:
   <sectionGroup name="telerik">

     <section name="sitefinity" type="Telerik.Sitefinity.Configuration.SectionHandler, Telerik.Sitefinity" requirePermission="false" />

   </sectionGroup>
3. Uncomment the following:
   <telerik>

     <sitefinity>

       <environment platform="WindowsAzure"/>

       <sitefinityConfig storageMode="Database" />

     </sitefinity>

   </telerik>
4. If you are not using Windows Azure, comment or delete the following line:
   <environment platform="WindowsAzure"/>
5. Perform procedure Administration: Move the database connection string in the web.config file.
6. Save and close the web.config and restart the application.
   The storage of configuration files is moved to the database. The existing configurations are taken as default. The files in ~/App_Data/Sitefinity/Configuration folder are made read-only and any future changes to the .config files are written to the database where each server can access them.

IMPORTANT: You must not remove existing configuration files from the project's ~/App_Data/Sitefinity/Configuration folder, because Sitefinity CMS continues to use them to read the default values. Only new changes are written to the database.