Contrary to some of the other opinions in this thread, I think that getting windows in multiple VMs is a better way to go than getting CF on multiple JVMs, and I have a fair amount of experience to back that up.
First off, licensing - windows 2003 web edition costs around $500 last I checked, though I don't track the virtualization pricing schemes. ColdFusion Standard edition is about $1300 and ColdFusion Enterprise weighs in at $6000. CF is always licensed to physical CPU pairs (dual cores count as 1 CPU). To go the CF Enterprise way, If you have 4 servers, 2 processors each, you'll buy 4 Windows licenses, and 4 CF enterprise licenses. - cost: $26,000. To go the virtualized server way, say you want to run 2 windows servers per box - only 4 servers so 4 CF Standard licenses, but 8 windows licenses, total cost: $9,200. Then there's the cost of the VM software, which I don't know about, I've heard you can do it for free. These are in no way real numbers, and i'm not sure if you can put windows web server edition on a virtual machine, so your mileage may vary. So I would argue the price is better with multiple virtual servers over multiple virtual machines. Next, the stability factor. I've run a lot of CF enterprise servers, installing, configuring different types of clustering, managing the servers and the applications, and developing the appilcations, I'd say about 40 in the last 5 years for a handful of different companies. Each time, the results haven't been 100% what we wanted out of the setup. If you are clustering the JRun servers, there is a lot of confusion over exactly what that does - a request onto one web server could be serviced by either JRun server. One JRun server sets itself up to be primary, and if taken offline, the cluster then fails and requests are serviced by no one. Session sharing is especially painful, especially if you carry a fair amout of data and have tens of thousands of users, no gigabit network can carry that much bandwidth, add another server and the bandwidth requirements increase exponentially. Furthermore, until the release of CF8, CFCs are not replicated safely. If you have a network load balancer that sends requests to different web servers and keeps users stuck to a particular server (except on failovers), you should have those servers servicing their own requests. If you need to tack data to a user, you can save it in session but don't replicate it - put an ID in a cookie and tie it to a database record, that way, it's in quick session memory, and if the server crashes, you can bring it back out on demand. (i've been meaning to blog this subject) Now back to stability, if one JVM crashes on one server, there's a better-than-you-think chance of it hurting the whole server. More often than not, I've had to reboot an entire server because one CF instance had problems. It would be much safer to keep the instances even more isolated - on their own virtual server. Anyways, it's just my opinion, but like I've said, I've done this a few times. -- nathan strutz http://www.dopefly.com/ On 6/11/07, James Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am thinking of setting up a virtual cluster to run our website for > reliability reasons. Does anyone have any good documentation > (preferably in a PDF or other offline readable format) in the form of > a beginners guide to CF clusters? > > Also, what is the licencing requirement for this, I am aware I can use > the same copy of Windows Server in multiple virtual machines but will > each one require it's own CF licence or can they share a licence since > they run on the same processor(s)? > > -- > Jay > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create Web Applications With ColdFusion MX7 & Flex 2. Build powerful, scalable RIAs. Free Trial http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=RVJS Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:281066 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
