Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 03:40:01PM -0800, Gill, Kathy wrote:
> > Certainly validating the "snowball" syndrome described in one
> > of the linux links posted here recently. I think the media have
> > underestimated the groundswell of support for *choice.*
>
> I think so, too. Like the writer of "The Last Dinosaur and
> the Tarpits of Doom", I consider the fight *over*. Linux and the
> open-source movement have clearly destroyed any and all hope that
> NT's developers might have had for its success.
<snip>
> And things are just getting started. I believe that the entire software
> industry is about to find out -- in rather pointed fashion -- just what
> hundreds of thousands, or *millions* of programmers working in
> cooperative, competitive, anarchic, organized fashion are capable of.
<snip>
> Or, if you prefer something even pithier, try one of my favorite sayings:
>
> The avalanche has already started.
> It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
> --- Kosh
>
> In *this* game, Microsoft and Oracle and Apple and IBM *are* only pebbles.
Rich, I just spent a little time getting flogged by a sysadmin at my new
co-lo service for using the combination of NT/SQL Server/Cold Fusion. They
say it won't scale the way I need to. I'm looking for some advice, not an
additional flogging from the Linux/Unix converts...and I am *especially*
interested in comments from anyone who is very familiar with both worlds. I
already know there may be scaling problems down the road, not immediately,
and have a fall-back plan that basically depends on the date that Allaire
releases CF for Linux or HP Aux, which are under development now.
I chose CF for many reasons: speed of development, server API, convenient
database hooks, database query caching, fail-over clustering, JIT cached
template compilation and a good multi-developer IDE being some of the top
reasons...and reasons why I choose it over Perl and any free/cheap SQL
database (mySQl, mSQL, etc), which would always load a process and have none
of the fancy application server features that CF has. Alternate application
servers, such as a Web Objects and alternate SQL databases, such as Oracle,
are not currently in our budget.
Now, here's what I need to do: run a system that hosts a continuously
expanding group of somewhat low traffic domains, much like any IPP does. All
of the domains will use the same SQL database(s). My former virtual host
sysadmin, who recently passed away, was confident that I could put over 100
domains on my first co-lo machine, with SQL Server, then when the load gets
too heavy, move the database to it's own machine, leave the first set of
domains on the first server and add any new domains on extra servers. For
extra robustness I could use the ColdFusion clustering features and load
balancing to distribute the load and provide fault-tolerance across servers.
He (the sysadmin at the host I used for virtual hosting) had been doing
something similar for a few years. There are also many other hosting
services that offer ColdFusion to all of their hosted domains, which surely
means many databases being hit. In my case it'll be just a few databases -
maybe around 6-8.
As I said, my former sysadmin had comfortably run this combination at his
virtual hosting company with over a hundred domains on each machine (and
many other IPP's do, as well). I trusted his opinion (BTW, he also ran a
group of Unix servers), so went forward with CF development.
Now, if were to port my code to something running on Linux, what would be
the best combination, giving me the same kind of application server
scalability, but allowing me to grow to handle possibly over 1000 low
traffic domains in a server farm, all dinging the same database server? BTW,
C++ solutions are not a possibility at this point in time.
I don't think that Linux(or BSD)/mySQL/perl could handle it. An acquaintence
of mine, who is one of the key Apache contributors, suggested that I look at
PHP (which I used a few years ago, but haven't been following it's
development too closely since then). Upon further questioning, he didn't
think that PHP would do all of the database caching/template compiling stuff
that I really need. He also is not familiar with CF, a problem I have been
having with almost every person I talk to who thinks that Unix is the only
way to go.
I'm relatively confident that Unix *is* the way to go, so you don't have to
twist my arm with that, but given that I have already spent a significant
time developing in CF, I am interested in hearing from anyone who has
successfully scaled CF to handle many sites AND from people who can lead me
toward a Unix based solution that will scale and not require buying Oracle
or the equivalent.
Any input on this is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jack
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The NEW Web Consultants Association FORUMS and CHAT:
Register Today at: http://just4u.com/forums/
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
Give the Gift of Life This Year...
Just4U Stop Smoking Support forum - helping smokers for
over three years-tell a friend: http://just4u.com/forums/
To get 500 Banner Ads for FREE
go to http://www.linkbuddies.com/start.go?id=111261
---------------------------------------------------------------------
