Those are some loaded questions... Don't worry about clustering IIS, just cluster your CF using clustercats and that handles balancing the IIS (sort of). Essentially, since ClusterCats monitors the availability of the CF server, any performance hit being taken by IIS will be reflected in the CF performance.
While it is possible to segment the CF boxes from the IIS boxes, I've never really found a solid argument for it, or really noticed any significant performance increase doing so. I would just assume add more boxes to the cluster than segment the two. ClusterCats works great as long as you use a shared client storage db and stay away from session vars. In reality, you don't have to avoid them entirely as clustercats supports 'sticky sessions'. Essentially, the user doesn't get shifted to another server unless the one they began on becomes completely unavailable. For some folks, the thought of the user having to restart the session on the off chance of server failure is considered reasonable exposure, that decision is yours to make though. A hardware load balancer is proffered to clustercats, but in honesty if you are talking about less than 6 servers, the performance difference isn't noticeable. I recommend segmenting the oracle servers. Set one up for select, the other for insert/delete procedures, then handle replication between them. In my experience, this has been the best performance solution with the least amount of effort. Depending on your environment it may make more since to segment your database. Clients A-L on one box and clients M-Z on the other for example. This really only makes since on VERY large databases though. Wish I could point you to a reliable site with real performance matrixes, but I've never found one I trust. My recommendations are based solely on personal experience, testing, and retesting. If this matter is of high concern, I would recommend bringing in a specialist to give you some consultation regarding your environment. Trey Rouse Data Applications Architect Web Services - Rice University -----Original Message----- From: Timothy Heald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 12:26 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Clustering, distributed CF and other assorted nonsense Hi, Having a discussion with someone here at work, and I am not sure where I would even begin to research the topics I need to look into. To begin with our environment is CF 5, NT 4, Oracle 8i, IIS. Now, we just received 3 new servers and 2 more are on the way. The suggested infrastructure is something like this: --------- -------- --------------- -------- -------- --- |multiple | --- |Firewall|--- |3 CF boxes | --- |Firewall| --- |2 Oracle 8i| |IIS Boxes| --- | |--- |1 as K2 Server | --- | | --- | Servers | --------- -------- --------------- -------- -------- --- Now I don't even know if this is possible or not. Can anyone recommend a good source of information on 1. Running IIS/CF in a distributed environment 2. Clustering IIS 3. Clustering CF Also anyone have or know of benchmark information on these subjects? I mean I can see how the distributed load can reduce the processor hit, but isn't there going to be some extra time in a page request involved in all the calls to different machines? I have suggested we do something more traditional along the lines of multiple boxes with IIS and CF then replicating / load balanced Oracle servers. Another question. At the last place I worked we had a hardware load balancing solution, and we just used client vars instead of sessions. How is cluster cats on CF 5? Does it work well? Is it better to just have the different CF servers use the same client var storage DB? Any help would be much appreciated. TIA Timothy Heald Assistant Webmaster Overseas Security Advisory Council U.S. Department of State ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
