Just some more things for you to think about... Since I am the one to maintain our environments, I am very fond of virtualization (VMWare in particular) for the simplicity of creating snapshots and being able to roll the servers back to those snapshots so easily.
It is also very simple to get new machines up and going by cloning existing machines. Need another webserver to test load balancing? No problem, clone the existing one and you have 2 identical servers with the app already up and running... The only benefit of physical boxes over VMs that I can think of is that everything would be on separate boxes. If the entire VM host goes down, you lose access to all machines on it. In a dev/test environment, that would most likely just mean some dev/testing downtime until they are back up. In production, there should be some kind of fail over anyway. -----Original Message----- From: Jessica Garruto [mailto:jgarr...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 8:13 AM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: Development and Testing Environment Recommendations We are fortunate enough to operate in an environment where we are alotted ample hardware resources, so we can operate separate physical servers if that's the recommendation. The point about development failures affecting our test environment is well-taken. To date, we've not needed to run load testing on our sites; our sites don't typically experience heavy traffic. Moving forward, we are open to doing things differently or implementing virtualization if the flexibility it allows outweighs the issue raised by Dave. > In an ideal world, everything is on a separate physical server, with > a > redundant backup. But using a single machine or VMs can be suitable. > There are, of course, different considerations for all of these > scenarios. For example, if you use a single machine, what's the > likelihood that a failure in your development environment could cause > a resource-based denial of service in your test environment? Do you > plan to run load tests in your testing environment? > > Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software > http://www.figleaf.com/ > http://training.figleaf.com/ > > Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on > GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized > instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:331579 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
