ColdFusion 9 on IIS 8 Windows Server 2012 R2

[Juss44]

So I am having all sorts of difficulty getting ColdFusion 9 to load the administrator page on IIS 8 in Windows Server 2012 R2.  I saw CF 10 has this compatibility but I was unable to find a CF 9 Support Matrix.  The Web Configuration Tool can not finish because there is a IIS compatibility issue and when it tries to restart IIS the process fails and indicates that IIS is version 8.x and the config tool is good for 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x.  Has anyone had to accomplish this yet for a client?  Currently I am getting Service Unavailable HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

[Carl Von Stetten]

Sadly, I wouldn't expect too much help for this.  I think the last Windows platform officially supported by Adobe for ColdFusion 9 was Windows Server 2008R2.  Adobe is ending core support for ColdFusion 9 at the end of this year, so they won't be spending any resources on tweaking it to run on newer OS platforms.  If you need to run on Windows Server 2012R2, you'll need to upgrade to ColdFusion 10 or 11.

-Carl V.

[Juss44]

Yes, that is the feeling that I am getting from the community, unfortunately the client wants what the client wants so off I go to run experiments on this combination.  So far I have learned that CF9 mapping in IIS 8 hates the usual workings of setting the *.cfm and *.cfc to the wildcard jrun_iis6_wildcard.dll.  That process is causing the application pool to shut down when setting the application pool to run a 32 bit application.  Good times, good times.

[Carl Von Stetten · Accepted solution]

To elaborate a bit on my previous reply, the problem with ColdFusion 9 on newer Windows OS platforms is the JRUN/IIS connector.  Adobe isn't making updates to the connector to accommodate newer OS platforms (that would apply to newer Mac OSX and Linux platforms too).  ColdFusion 10 and 11 now use Tomcat instead of JRUN, so they are using a completely different connector for web server integration.  The Tomcat connector will continue to get updated in whatever the current ColdFusion release is (at this point, it's ColdFusion 11) as new OS platforms become available.

If you are running ColdFusion 9 Enterprise and not Standard, you might have another option: using a ColdFusion WAR install on Tomcat.  I believe Charlie Arehart and others have blogged about doing this.  There are open-source Tomcat/IIS connectors that can then be used to connect Tomcat to IIS (in fact, look into the connector Railo/OpenBD are using).

-Carl V.

[Whiteboxwebby]

Our System Admin was unable to get it to work and he spent most of a week with the new servers trying to make it work, in the end we have had to bite the bullet and jump to CF11.

We havent encountered any issues with our CF code not working with CF11 there might be a couple of CGI.SCRIPT_NAME changes you might need to make but other than that we haven't come across any issues. (other than the upgrade cost)

[vishu_13]

I agree with Carl According to ColdFusion 9 support matrix, Windows 2012 is not a supported platform. I will suggest you to upgrade to ColdFusion 11 (latest version)

Here are some steps you can follow :

Remove ColdFusion 9 Handler Mappings via Web Server Configuration Tool. If you are unable to do so, then you can do that manually in IIS

Stop ColdFusion 9 Services

Download and Install ColdFusion 9.0.1

While installing ColdFusion 9.0.1, choose "Built in Web Server" option

After ColdFusion 9.0.1 installation, run the Web Server Configuration Tool

Now try to access ColdFusion 9.0.1 Admin via IIS 8

NOTE : As CF 9 is not supported on Windows 2012, you might face some unexpected behavior.

HTH

Thanks
VJ

[PetoskeySlim]

Server 2012

IIS 8

Coldfusion 9

Running Coldfusion Admin works like a charm using Heidi Bautista's document that used to be posted here <<http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?page=1&cid=224AA>> called 'Getting ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 Running on Vista and IIS7'

The down side is that can't get flashforms loading whereas it worked in earlier IIS versions.  Get the generic flex2gateway error...

I know Adobe doesn't claim any support for version 9 and Server 2012 but just so you all know that the Administrator page works fine as do any other hyperlinks, tabs and the like within the Administrator page.  The majority of the program works also for this except what was aforementioned.