ColdFusion Enterprise cluster vs F5

[jentao]

Are there any recommendations on hardware vs. software clustering for high availability and performance?  I.e., running 2+ servers in an Enterprise cluster vs putting those servers behind an F5 appliance for load balancing and failover.

[demarcao]

just wondering what you decided to do?  we have a similar situation,.

[Dave Watts]

This is not really an either-or situation. You can use CF's clustering, you can use a load balancer, or you can use both. In my opinion, the load balancer clustering is more useful than CF's clustering, but again you can use both at the same time.

CF lets you cluster instances on one or multiple machines, and it lets you optionally share session data among those instances. Load balancers won't let you share session data across instances. But you can use something other than a traditional CF session to store "session" information. If you're going to have a larger pool of servers behind a load balancer, you might find that CF's session sharing doesn't scale that well past two or three servers.

Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software