Distributed Mode - Instance to Many Sites (CF 11 and IIS 8.5)

[Matthew C. Parks]

Just got over a huge hump in out new server configuration and got Distributed Mode set up.

In IIS, site goes to CF 11 Server, but the CF server is set to use {cf_home}/wwwroot as the default root directory for pages.

We are working towards the locked down recommendations, that have the web sites on another partition and we host multiple clients on one instance of CF.  So that is the issue, not sure how we need to tweak the set up so that as IIS passes the requests over ports to CF server to go to the correct web code base.

Let me attempt to illistrat:

Web Server          ColdFusion Server     Code base on CF server

IIS/Site1               InstanceA                    P:\websites\Site1

IIS/Site2               InstanceA                    P:\websites\Site2

IIS/Site3               InstanceB                    P:\websites\Site3

IIS/Site4               InstanceB                    P:\websites\Site4

I would think that having to write a connector for each site seems a bit much, but if that is the way it is done then that is the way it is done.  just seems to me that CF server should know which IIS site this request came from other than port, maybe IP that than can be directed to the correct code base.

BUT again, I don't know thus the reason for asking here.  Any suggested are welcome and thank you.

[Matthew C. Parks]

Multi-Homing is the what I am attempting to do here and I can only get the sites to server via that instance/wwwroot path only.  Changing the <Context> element in the server.xml for the instance only breaks the CF admin for instance and does not run like I was hoping.

Does no one run Distributed Mode and Multi-Home?

[Matthew C. Parks · Accepted solution]

OK, just to make notes for myself since I am the only one following my post. (yuck yuck)

[instance]/runtime/conf/server.xml was modified within the <ENGINE> node AFTER

<Host autoDeploy="false" appBase="webapps" name="localhost" unpackWARs="true">

...

</Host>

I added N number of <Host> one for each Virtual Host we wanted on that CF Instance:

<Host name="siteN" appBase="E:\LIVE_SITES\" autoDeploy="false" unpackWARs="false" deployOnStartup = "false">

               <Context path="" docBase="E:\LIVE_SITES\siteN" />

               <Alias>URL to site N</Alias>

</Host>

Just wanted to post answer to problem just in case other are facing issue in future.

[Charlie Arehart]

Just wanted to add a note of observation here: Matthew and I have spoken offline (I began consulting with him on this and other issues a few days after he wrote here) and I helped him see that he does NOT need these hosts elements. Still, his attempt to use distributed mode (CF running on a server separate from that running IIS or Apache) has indeed been a challenge. We solved a few (he solved many on his own, I helped with some others) but it's still not quite working right. Perhaps he or I may write up some details once we have it all working to his satisfaction, if indeed that's possible (there are a lot of moving parts).