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A
ACS LLC
Inspiring
July 27, 2018
Question

ColdFusion on Azure and AWS

  • July 27, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 5337 views

I'm looking to get some hands on experience with Azure and AWS.

Can anybody tell me if there are any gotchas that I should be aware of when trying to run CF2016 on either of these platforms?

At the moment I am running on a cloud based system using VPS servers, the ISP has a great set of dashboard controlled features, for Firewall, load balancing etc, very easy to set up and use.

I'm wondering if setting up in Azure or AWS would be as simple? Can I set up a VPS in the same way, install CF and roll with it, or is this going to be a very different and possibly challenging task?

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

alvinolavarrieta
alvinolavarrieta
New Participant
October 29, 2018

This may answer your question:

Running ColdFusion in Azure WebApp – Michael Hansen (CSA/ASA)

ColdFusion Help | Install the JEE configuration

altascene
altascene
Inspiring
October 17, 2018

Good information but, of course, I am looking for something a little different.  Specifically, I would like to have someone review our existing system, and then make recommendations on how to migrate it to either AWS or Azure.  I have tried Azure, which worked well on the CF side, expect for connectivity with a test SQL database on Azure SQL.  I need more detailed guidance on the "how-to" regarding migration.  Any recommendations would be appreciated.

D
Dave Watts
Community Expert
October 18, 2018

That is a very broad question. If you just want to build a replica of your current infrastructure, say, one web/app and one database server, there isn't much to it - you set up two virtual servers in AWS or Azure and configure them just like you'd configure two local virtual or physical servers. But the value of moving to the cloud is really that you can do other stuff, like add lots of mechanisms for scalability and redundancy. Want to have an auto-scaling pool with a shared filesystem? You can do it. Etc, etc, etc. So the real question when you're asking how to migrate is, what exactly are you trying to build?

As for your Azure SQL issue, I suspect it was configured to use Windows authentication. CF by default uses "mixed-mode" authentication. You can probably change either the database or CF to work the other way.

Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
altascene
altascene
Inspiring
October 18, 2018

Dave,

Thanks for the replies.  Yes, planning is a big issue for us as, while we know what we have, what we want, and the plethora of options that AWS and Azure offer, make planning a challenge.  That's why we are also looking for some direction from knowledgeable sources.  I have reached out to some businesses that have expertise in these areas, and await their reply.  In the meantime, we will have the "what are our goals and objectives" discussion.

Thanks,
Scott

D
Dave Watts
Community Expert
July 27, 2018

I have quite a bit of experience with CF on AWS. I don't have any experience with CF on Azure, but I do have some Azure experience and I expect it would basically work the same way for CF as for other things that aren't .NET apps. CF on AWS is pretty straightforward. You can install CF on EC2 instances just like you'd install it on on-premise VMs or hardware. Everything works just fine. One of our largest CF customers, Signupgenius.com, is on AWS, as well as several other large-scale CF customers.

I can't really compare your current dashboard to what you get with AWS. But AWS has a pretty good dashboard for configuring all of the items you listed. The problem with the AWS dashboard is that it also has tons of other features, and just finding the things you want in there can be pretty complicated. Anyway, I generally recommend that you not use the dashboard and use the AWS API instead. This lets you preserve your infrastructure setup as code, which can be incredibly valuable. Needless to say, though, not everyone takes this advice - sometimes I don't take it myself!

The real problem with CF on AWS is better described as the real problem with any proprietary software on AWS. You can't use some of the most interesting features of the platform unless you're willing to pay for them even if you don't use them. For example, let's say you want to have auto scaling. Auto scaling lets you have a pool of servers that automatically increases or decreases based on incoming traffic. Well, you pay for CF per server, so you kind of have to know how many servers you're going to have in advance. So, a lot of CF customers will simply over-provision here rather than try to provision as exactly as auto scaling allows. If on the other hand you were using something like PHP (yeah, I know, yecch), you wouldn't have to worry about that and you could use auto scaling to its fullest extent. Another aspect of that problem is that you can't use things like Lambda to run CFML code, because it's a proprietary language that Amazon will simply never support. This probably isn't something you really care about, but it would be nice to run CFML in a serverless environment.

If you're running CF on Linux, you get more options, like the ability to use Docker containers and things like Kubernetes to orchestrate said containers.

Azure is basicallly going to be the same environment. You'll have to use Azure VMs instead of Azure Web Apps, etc. And don't forget Google Cloud Platform, which is just as good as Azure for this stuff, and arguably better, and may be as good as or better than AWS depending on what features you want to use.

Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
    pete_freitag
    pete_freitag
    Participating Frequently
    July 27, 2018

    Using AWS can be as simple as spinning up a instance on EC2, this is pretty easy to figure out and get going. The problem with AWS is also its power, it is so configurable that spinning up an instance on EC2 will have 30-50 configurable options - I think that can be overwhelming for some.

    Adobe does have some ColdFusion AMI's on the marketplace that have hourly licensing, so you should be able to use features like auto-scaling with those instances, but if you are bringing your own license key then everything Dave said about that would apply.

    Your best bet is to give it a try, you can do so for free in the free tier or even just spinning up a server for a day to play around can be very cheap. I use AWS all the time for setting up temporary servers to test stuff.

    You may find that it is too complex for your needs, or you might just love it.

    D
    Dave Watts
    Community Expert
    July 27, 2018

    Yeah, I left out the CF AMIs. I don't really like them for a variety of reasons, but you can use them for auto scaling. And it is worth just jumping in and giving it a try, as long as you remember to turn everything off when you're done.

    Dave Watts, Fig Leaf Software

    Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
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