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MachineKey Generator
Run the following tool to create a valid random machine key to place in your web.config or machine.config file.
If you plan to deploy your application in a Web farm, you must ensure that the
configuration files on each server share the same value for
validationKey and
decryptionKey, which are used for
hashing and decryption. Since you cannot guarantee which web server will handle
web requests, it is required to have the machine key shared across web servers
in the farm.
It is also beneficial on a single box to keep the machine key consistent between
IIS recycles and server reboots.
Lastly, each time you upgrade to a new version of ASP.NET, the key material used to
automatically generate keys changes. Therefore, even if your application runs on
a single Web server, if the keys need to remain stable over time, you should
explicitly set the values for both
validation and
decryption.
For more information about MachineKey, click on the links below: