Participating Frequently

Question

Which Deployment Type to Select?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 24, 2025
4 replies
501 views

I'm working in a location where they provision a development server for us to setup a new virtual Windows Server instance for ColdFusion 2023 Enterprise.

When configured/secured, this will be cloned into a production instance.

My question is, should I choose Development for the deployment type and then switch it to Production after the cloning?

Or set it to Production and then change my development instance from Production to Development after the cloning?

Since I'm not sure what it's actually doing "behind the scenes" I want to be sure I choose the best option.

Thanks!

M

MrLeG823841534Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks all for the feedback!

I guess I have some things to consider here.

Here's my next question, based on an assumption I perhaps should not have made.

Do I need to pay for a development license? I've been assuming that since I'm the single coder that will be using this instance, I could use it in what used to be Developer or Single User mode without too many issues, but my knowledge on this may be outdated.

Note: this is a HUGE deal that my workplace is FINALLY allowing me to update from CF 11, which they had denied for a very long time. Better heads prevailed and we will get ourselves more secure, which is why my questions may seem a bit outdated. I appreciate everyone's patience and guidance as I navigate this BIG jump in CF versions.

Charlie Arehart

Community Expert

The dev edition is free and can be used by anyone, anywhere--for non-prod purposes, as discussed in the EULA (shown during install, or available online or in the cf folder once installed).

And as discussed there also, it's not a "single user" edition. It can be used by any number of people (again, for non prod use), but no more than two concurrent requests can run at a time. Any beyond that are rejected with a message indicating this dev edition limitation. (It's been like this for several years, perhaps even back to cf11.)

Finally this choice to use the dev edition is simply one made at the start of the install of cf. If you have a license you can put that serial number in instead there, or later via the admin. Or you can choose at install to run the 30-day trial--and if you don't put in a serial number within 30 days, it will revert to the free dev edition.

There is no separate installer for these different editions, to be clear.

So yes, you can absolutely use this for the development/migration effort you're undertaking. Good luck with it.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

D

Dave Watts

Community Expert

Since you're going to clone an existing instance here, I think you may run into some unique problems that weren't specifically brought up. @Charlie Arehart did mention deployment profiles, but I don't think you can change server profiles in CF 2023 after installing it, and that could significantly increase the complexity of deploying a new server regardless of the license. Unfortunately, it would also increase the complexity of development if you choose the secure profile. I'll have to take a look and figure out if CF 2023 lets you change server profiles or not to give you a better answer.

On the bright side, nothing important for CF is stored in the Windows Registry. Everything is in a text file of some type or another within the CF install directory. So if you're able to follow the security guide and change all of the appropriate settings, you don't really need server profiles. But that might be a big if.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

Charlie Arehart

Community Expert

Dave, I recommended the workaround because it's worked, for many. I'm aware of no negative impacts. Indeed, I'm pretty sure I've seen it offered by Adobe directly.

And as for the "secure profile", I'm afraid you're falling into the trap I'd tried to protect folks here from: that's about the "server profile" choice. It's NOT related to this matter of the "deployment profile"--which is STRICTLY about activation, from all I've observed.

And that's all the OP was asking about. You and BKBK have brought up useful points on related matters, but I'm pretty confident the answer is simply the one I offered. And for the sake of everyone reading along, I'm not saying this to "win points", let alone "win the argument". I really am trying to provide what you I sincerely believe is the simplest answer to this question, which surely others will ask (as indeed they have, as discussed in that other thread).

Certainly if anyone KNOWS of a reason that that simple file change and cf restart should NOT solve the problem presented, let us know. Otherwise, I hope the OP will let us know it it works for the. Since the cf admin shows what deployment profile you're running, it will be clear either way. Other topics are interesting, but let's see if this solves all that they were asking about.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

D

Dave Watts

Community Expert

I just wanted to bring up the server profile again because a lot of people are going to expect to do developer stuff like RDS on a developer server license. But, yes, you're correct, changing the deployment profile/license type is something that can be done very simply as you described.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

Charlie Arehart

Community Expert

That's an interesting challenge, MrLeG8. To be clear, CF doesn't offer any means in the Admin ui to change the deployment type as you are hoping to do, in such a cloning of an instance.

But here's good news: there IS a file which you can edit (licenseinfo.properties) to change between types, then restart cf. For more, see my answer to the same sort of question here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion-discussions/coldfusion-deployment-profile/m-p/12807688

And to the other aspect of your question, nothing changes otherwise within cf based on this deployment type. It's simply reporting to Adobe what your intent is for using a licensed cf instance when it's activated (new since cf2021).

It would be easy to confuse this with the similarly named "server profile", which was introduced in cf11, with choices of dev, prod, and prod+secure. Those choices DO affect configuration of cf. More on that in the docs

here.

Hope that helps.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

BKBK

Community Expert

The customary recommendation in software development is phased deployment along the so-called DTAP street. DTAP stands for the 4 deployment phases Development > Testing > Acceptance > Production. The usual requirement is that these 4 phases be isolated from each other. That fosters agility, resilience and efficiency,

Hence, using just one environment and switching between Development and Production instances is a sub-optimal deployment design. Instead, you should install at least 2 separate, isolated ColdFusion instances: one for Development, Testing and Acceptance, and one for Production. That is the minimum set-up I would recommend.

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