So the spirit of your question seems to be "can you replicate sessions without software load balancing?" The basic answer is that you can't. Session replication is a function of the CF load balancing features. However, there are other ways to read your question.
If you are asking if you can swap sessions around without allowing your coldfusion servers to have software-based failover, I am not completely sure about that. It seems like something that should be possible, but I can't think of how, it's been a couple versions and a few years since I've managed clustered servers. Do you really want to disable software failover, though? It will be more intelligent than your hardware failover. Finally, I want to point out that session replication is typically a bad idea. It will eat up your network bandwidth and feast on your CPUs. It will have all your available memory for dessert. If one of your servers crashes because it is out of RAM, the other one will do the same. So how do you get around it? Obviously sticky sessions on your HWLB is the first step. But assuming your servers will crash, how do your replicate session data? There are lots of ways, and it depends on your application and what the application rules are for what data to store where. Sometimes session data can just be discarded and lost - things like saved search criteria. Sometimes you can rebuild it from data in your database - you just need a link from the session to the user information; you could use a cookie or put it in your database. You can also take advantage of CF's caching engine, Ehcache, which can do clustered cache, in memory, on disk, even state servers, and combinations of these all. Don't use client variables... just... don't. nathan strutz [www.dopefly.com] [hi.im/nathanstrutz] [about.me/nathanstrutz] On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Brad Parker <[email protected]> wrote: > > Here's a question hopefully someone can answer. Is it possible to use > session replication to multiple instances on different physical servers > without having to use CF load-balancing? We have a hardware load balancer > in front of the web servers. I would like hardware appliance to handle the > load-balancing and failover in the event a failure. All I want CF to do is > replicate the sessions so they are available on the other servers if the > load balancer marks a server as unavailable. Is this possible? > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:348035 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
