i find it hard to believe that i’m still yet to find a CFMX host that offers virtual instances of CFMX. All the hosts (including my current one) use a single instance of CFMX on their shared servers for potentially hundreds of customer sites, so if one customer site drags down the CF server then all the customers are affected.
I’ve contacted my host to see what their thoughts were on the matter and at the end of the day it seems (as always) to come down to cost. If a host can run say 200 customers sites under a single CFMX instance on a single server but could only run 25 virtual instances on another server (due to added resources of jrun etc) then you end up with expanding costs of building more servers to support the same number of customers. By using the single instance they can offer robust solutions at a decent enough price.
Even with the additional cost, I think a hosted virtual instance CFMX server would serve as an interim solution between shared servers and dedicated servers and offer CF users the robustness of a ‘virtual’ dedicated CFMX server in the shared server environment. I’m certainly going to be keeping a close eye on CFMX hosting options as well as the administration options that Blackstone is touted to open up for us developers and our clients.
September 13th, 2004 at 6:06 pm
http://www.cfxhosting.com/StandardHosting/VPS/index.cfm
Not sure if they are doing this through cfmx ent. or not.
September 13th, 2004 at 6:11 pm
Yes, they are using Enterprise. I"ve been a VPS customer for 2 months now and have found the service to be great!
September 13th, 2004 at 7:26 pm
If you don’t mind me throwing this in, John, one advantage of BlueDragon (especially in this multiple instance deployment on J2EE servers) is that its overhead is much lower. It can be as little as a few meg per instance (for the BlueDragon web app).
Of course, there’s also the overhead of the app server instance, but different app servers have different levels of their own overhead per instance. So it should be possible for one to get great combinations of price/performance on a multiple instance deployment with BlueDragon (like CFMX, the license is per CPU with as many instances as the server can handle).
September 13th, 2004 at 7:43 pm
johnb - If you’re interested, we would be glad to set up a configuration for you on our server farm at The NAP of the Americas.
- http://www.napoftheamericas.net/about.cfm
- http://www.napoftheamericas.net/aboutbi.cfm
Rather than getting bandwidth from a single carrier, we’re plugged into the same peering fabric that the carriers use (read as much better connectivity than most providers).
Contact me if you would like more info. We’re trying to really understand what the CF community needs when it comes to hosting.
Regards,
Michael
September 14th, 2004 at 3:46 am
Thanks for the great comments. I’ve looked at the offering from CFX hosting and read the CFDJ article on it and it seems pricey when i can get a bare dedicated server for a similar price - granted CFMX would need to be bought on top (or BD).
Charlie, you know my current problem with BD
Hopefully we’ll get that one fixed soon, but i’m really holding out for 6.2 as my apps have made heavy use of <CFLOGIN> - but i’ll be bugging you this weekend in DC about that!
I am beginning to ask myself if no one is already providing this level of hosting does the community want it?
September 14th, 2004 at 4:23 am
Before i’d posted my initial entry on the subject I’d been speaking to Lucas @ MM UK, he’s made a blog entry too on the subject, here
September 14th, 2004 at 4:48 am
Charlie, just seen you can’t make it to DC this weekend, that’s a shame!
September 14th, 2004 at 10:56 am
Yes, sadly, we can’t make the Fusebox conference but we hope to be there in spirit, and in discussion :-). As for the CFLOGIN support, yes, that’s scheduled for the next release, 6.2, due to go into beta at the end of this month.
As for why people seem not to use the multiple instances, I think partly it’s confusion. Some fear that deploying CFML on J2EE is somehow more challenging for the end-user developers using the host (when really it need not be, and need not involve "redeployment" of the web app when a change is made, but can just be an FTP into a directory like they already have).
Also, I think many simply don’t understand the additional benefits of deploying CFML on J2EE (which I discussed in my April CFDJ article, “Making the Case for CFML on J2EE”, at http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44481&DE=1 ;), so they’re not as motivated to look into it.
Finally, for those working on J2EE servers other than JRun (where MM makes the deployment of CFMX easy), there’s quite a bit that’s non-standard about the deployment of CFMX as a web app on other J2EE servers, so that can scare away even those (and especially those) familiar with running J2EE servers. This is something that MM has said they plan to address in Blackstone, but it’s something that BlueDragon/J2EE does now.
I wrote about the ease of deploying CFML as a standard web app on any J2EE server in my June CFDJ article, “CFML on J2EE: Easy as 1-2-3″, at http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45338&DE=1.
Hope all that’s helpful for those considering this subject.