Clustering and load balancing in CF2016

[Joe Raycroft]

I'm trying to create a load balanced cluster with failover in CF2016 between two Windows 2016 servers. I had both servers running independent instances of ColdFusion and then followed the instructions found here Adobe ColdFusion 10 * Enabling clustering for load balancing and failover to create the cluster. Now the instance on the host server is no longer working and I can't access the administrator on the server either. The first instance I created on the remote server does still work and is still accessible. So to summarize I basically have this:

Server 1 - host

• CF2016 developer edition
• Windows Server 2016
• IIS
• Cluster with two instances - one hosted on this machine the other hosted on server 2
• Administrator is no longer accessible and instance no longer works

Server 2 - remote

• CF2016 developer edition
• Windows Server 2016
• IIS
• Two instances - one instance is part of the cluster on server 1
• Instance 2 is not accessible in anyway - I didn't expect it to be since I would need to access it through the host but the host doesn't work at all
• Instance 1 is still accessible

Where can I find up to date documentation about clustering in ColdFusion? CF10 is almost 6 years old now surely there must be more recent documentation somewhere? The other issue with the documentation I've found is that it is all regarding Tomcat but I am using IIS to host the site. I haven't been able to find any documentation for IIS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dave Watts]

That documentation link is still pretty current, actually. The underlying mechanism for clustering hasn't changed that much. CF clustering is completely dependent on Tomcat, and IIS doesn't really have anything to do with it. Once you have a cluster, you can hook that cluster up to IIS or Apache just like you'd do with a single instance. You'll just see the cluster name in wsconfig instead of the instance name.

You really need to have one instance that you're not using for anything else except for creating other instances and creating clusters. This instance doesn't need to be connected to IIS at all, you can just use the built-in web server on TCP/8500.

This kind of configuration is covered in some depth in our CF administration course, described here:

ColdFusion Administration Training : Administering ColdFusion 10/11

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software