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I have few doubts regarding Coldfusion clustering.

  1. Is there any benefits of Creating multiple instances of a single ColdFusion server, Create a cluster by adding those instances and host the application on the cluster? Is there any performace benefits over directly use the default cfusion instance?

  2. Lets say I have two machines each with CF enterprise edition installed. Now for load balancing there are two options, i. Use ColdFusion clustering, create a cluster by adding instances from the two servers(Using Register Remote Instances option), and host the application. ii. Use a separate hardware load balancer to distribute the traffic. Which option is good to use?

I am new to Coldfusion clustering and load balancing please help.

user3427540
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Well as you observed, you get no failover if you put all your ColdFusion eggs in the same server basket. So if that's part of your goal, clustering multiple ColdFusion instances within one box is not going to help you.

However there's still merit of sorts in having multiple CF instances serving the same app on one box: one gets multiple JVMs servicing requests.

A consideration in the past is that the amount of memory a JVM could address was limited (mostly on 32-bit architecture, which is uncommon these days), so one could run multiple CF instances on multiple JVMs, with each JVM benig able to allocate as much RAM as it could. This is not really an issue these days on 64-bit architecture, and JVMs being able to robustly manage a whole bunch of memory.

As far as the second question goes, I have no direct experience but in general I would try to use solutions specifically intended for the task at hand. A CF server is for processing CFML, and it happens to add clustering and a degree of load balancing as an extra, whereas a load balancer is a dedicated tool for the job. I think that if you need a load-balanced, fault-tolerant system then your situation is perhaps sufficiently critical that it calls for the better solution, which would be to use a dedicated load balancer, if that's an option. But like I said, I am not an expert in that area.

Adam Cameron
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  • Thanks adam for your reply, I got the answer of my first question. Still I did not get a clear idea about my second question. If I have two CF servers which option is good to implement, `1. Using ColdFusion clustering (By Registering Remote Instances) or 2. Use a hardware load balancer.` – user3427540 Jun 16 '14 at 03:59
  • Sorry, yeah, I'm no expert there, so didn't answer. I have updated to give my non-expert opinion. – Adam Cameron Jun 18 '14 at 05:39