I've just finished up with a client needing failover and load balancing for their Cold Fusion instalation. There are a number of options available to you depending on the number of servers and your set up.
Must haves
For any load balancing or failover option to work, you will need some sort of shared storage perferabally a storage area network. This will allow your application to share common files like pictures or even cache files. HP, Compaq and Dell have a number of SAN devices (since the number of photos will incresse over time)
Should Haves
Although Microsoft Advanced server comes with Microsoft clustering, quite a few people have had troubble seting up servers with this configuration. Better to use a hardware device such as Coyote Point of BigIP. By going this route you'll save your client money in the long run through less fiddling with the servers and cheeper systems. (Some CF talkers will talk about MS clusterings ease of use-- however, my experiance and others have been quite different)
Think about buying computers with dual network cards. One network card will be to connect the machines to the outside. The second cable, the heartbeat cable transferrs the J2EE application sessions between the servers. This will remove some of the overhead from people reaching your applications.
Do you need a domain controler?
Set the items up as member servers. Both the MS clustering environment and the hardware set up do not require a full time domain controler
Do you need to switch the IP addresses?
One needs to register the IP addresses of each machine with the cluster IP address. If you are at a hosting facility, then you will need to have a device of some sort provide NAT services-- allowing you to configure as many devices (SAN, Cluster servers, Database servers to the cluster). The cluster has rules checking if certain members are down-- if they are then traffic moves to the servers that are up -- all without switching IP addresses.
So how many servers will you need?
At least 5-- two for database, two for JRUN/IIS one for the SAN
How do you configure Cold Fusion?
Read Brandon Purcell's article carefully at http://www.bpurcel.com on Cold Fusion/Jrun Clustering. You will need to set up CF as either an WAR or EAR file within your clustered server and then rerun the Web Server Configuration Tool within JRUN to cluster JRUN -- so Cold Fusion is on all servers. One thing that Brandon's excellent article does not mention is the need to create CAR files for application settings -- such as mappings for the SAN device.
Is your client using DB logins or Windows logins? If it is just DB logins then you will need to load balance and failover JRUN to keep the session variables alive!
Keep us CFtalkers in the loop on your progress--- there are many of us out these that could use this information at a later date.
Jeremy
>Does anyone have experience with server clustering?
>
>I will describe the client's wishes.
>
>In order to provide as much uptime as possible with fail-over capability.
>
>A Web server with a multiple online accounting system. It will have user
>registration, and personal file/photo upload and storage capability It will
>also be connected to a SQL2k database server.
>
>What they want to do is to mirror a copy of this server to an adjacent machine,
>so that in the event of a failure, all they will have to do is to switch the IP
>numbers and the backup machine will take up where the original left off,
>however, they will expect that all uploaded files, user accounts, etc. to
>already be in place. I think this will require duplication of the Windows
>registry, or at least portions of it to be replicated (mirrored) as well.
>
>The OS will be Win2003 Enterprise, with CF 6.1 professional, and SQL2k database.
>
>Will this require a third machine to be set up as a domain controller, or
>something like that to preserve the user accounts?
>
>This application (Web site) will be very mission critical, and is a little
>beyond my experience at the moment.
>They will also be setting up a triple redundancy Internet backbone connection
>for connectivity protection. This will be separate from the server setup.
>
>Does anyone have pointers, gotchas, or directions on where to look for the
>appropriate setup?
>
>Thanks much!
>
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