Installing and Configuring ColdFusion MX 6.1 Multiple Instances with IIS and Apache Virtual Hosts
Brandon Purcell
Table of Contents
This article explains the process of creating multiple instances with ColdFusion MX 6.1 Enterprise and configuring multiple instances to both Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) and Apache using virtual hosts. By running ColdFusion in multiple instances instead of a single instance on a single machine, you can:
- Isolate applications to ensure high availability.
- Isolate applications for security.
- Fine-tune each website with its ColdFusion server instance.
For more details on advantages of using multiple instances, read my article, Advantages for Using Multiple Instances for ColdFusion MX and Tim Buntel's article, Introducing Multiple Server Instances in ColdFusion MX Enterprise 6.1.
Now that you know why you should use multiple instances, the question is: How do you do it? In this article, I outline a step-by-step process—installing ColdFusionMX 6.1, creating new instances of JRun, deploying ColdFusion to the new instances, and configuring each new instance to the external web server.
Requirements
To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:
ColdFusion
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BuyAdditional information:
To best illustrate configuring multiple instances, you will configure two instances of ColdFusion and connect these instances to three sites in IIS and three Apache virtual hosts. Figure 1 demonstrates the configuration you will use with Apache. Virtual Host 1 will have its own ColdFusion instance while Virtual Hosts 2 and 3 will share the second ColdFusion instance. This approach gives mission-critical sites their own instances, while a site with less traffic shares instance with other virtual hosts. Figure 2 shows the same model using IIS.
Figure 1. Three Apache virtual hosts connected to two instances of ColdFusion
Figure 2. Three IIS sites connected to two instances of ColdFusion
