We run IIS websites on a VMWare production server that pull image content and video content from a separate IIS instance on another server (media server). The media calls (images and video) are straight http:// calls and not using a streaming application. During peak traffic periods, we clone the production server five times and have a load balancer distribute traffic to all five production servers. The media server does not get ramped up. We noticed that the processing and resources on the media server gets very taxed during this period. Would it make sense to run the IIS instance for the media server locally on the production server and have it cloned with the production servers, then have a rule on the load balancer negotiating these media calls from the website? Would it be better to allocate more resources (memory and CPUs) to the media server VM and not clone it with the production servers? Recommendations are sincerely appreciated.