[thelist] Cold Fusion Distributed and Clustered env.

[Judah McAuley]

Matt Mozer wrote:
>
> I am wondering whether I can set up multiple virtual directories that
> resolve to different domain names?
Virtual directories under IIS live under a website entry.  The website
entry is where the host header resolution happens.  The virtual
directories have no knowledge about what domain name they live under.

So you could have the following:

Website 1 (responds to http://www.mysite1.com/)
	Virtual Directory /myvirtualdir that points to C:\InetPub\dir1

Website 2 (responds to http://www.mysite2.com/)
	Virtual Directory /myvirtualdir that points to C:\InetPub\dir2

You could even have both virtual directories pointing to the same folder
if you want.  The point is that virtual directories don't do any domain
name parsing, all that stuff happens at the website entry level.  Take a
look at Properties for a website entry, then look at Web Site ->
Advanced to see how IIS allows you to have multiple domain names point
to a single website entry.

> I would like to know if I can host more than one website in the same
> clustered and distributed env. We have an IIS presentation layer ---> CF
> business logic Servers ---> Sql backend.

Yes you can.  Once you have the cluster set up correctly, you can use
something as simple as round-robin DNS to direct requests to different
machines.  Each machine will behave pretty much as if it were a
standalone server.  The clustering part allows you to share information
between servers (especially at the CF level and SQL db level), but
doesn't really affect IIS and what it does.  You can also set up things
with Cisco Local Director that will enable a more intelligent balancing
of the traffic load.

If you are going to be doing much clustering and you are a bit unsure of
whether you are doing it right or not, I'd recommend bringing in a
consultant or getting some further training.  All that money you spend
on extra hardware and licensing won't do you any good if the cluster
isn't configured correctly.  It's a worthwhile investment to get it
right from the get-go and allow yourself to spend your time on fine
tuning the applications you run on the cluster.

Hope this answers some of you questions,
Judah