How to deploy coldfusion as mvc framework from server standpoint?.

Report · Apr 25, 2006

Does anyone know how to deploy mvc framework from server standpoint?. I have all my business logic as cfcs but I want to move them to different server so that my cfm code is in one server and my cfcs are in another. Has anyone done this or point me in the right direction?.

Report · Apr 26, 2006

CFDEBUG wrote:
> Does anyone know how to deploy mvc framework from server standpoint?. I have
> all my business logic as cfcs but I want to move them to different server so
> that my cfm code is in one server and my cfcs are in another. Has anyone done
> this or point me in the right direction?.
>

My first question would be why you don't want to have your .cfm pages
and your CFCs on the same physical server? I would think you'd have to
have a very compelling reason to do this in order to add the additional
complexity as well as the performance hit you'll take by instantiating
remote objects (if it's even doable, which I'd have to think about).

Matt

--
Matt Woodward
mpwoodward@gmail.com
Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion

Report · Apr 26, 2006

Thanx Matt for replying. Unfortunately it was not my decision. My company wanted to do it like that for security reasons. They wanted to make coldfusion apps like Java 3-tier with jsps in one server and servlets/ejbs in another, if possible. I thought that it would be like making it unncessarily complex. But didn't have facts to prove it.

Can you give me some reasons why I should stick to keeping them in one server?. and why I shouldn't move them into different servers. May be I can convince them if there are some solid reasons. By the way, I'm using model-glue.

Report · Apr 26, 2006

can you just use coldfusion mappings?

like, if cfcs are on \\myoneserver\mycfcroot and you map /mycfcroot to that
directory, can your cfm pages on server 2 use
createobject("component","mycfcroot.mycfc");

never tried it, but seems like it should work.

"CFDEBUG" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:e2o2o7$nrp$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Thanx Matt for replying. Unfortunately it was not my decision. My company
> wanted to do it like that for security reasons. They wanted to make
> coldfusion
> apps like Java 3-tier with jsps in one server and servlets/ejbs in
> another, if
> possible. I thought that it would be like making it unncessarily complex.
> But
> didn't have facts to prove it.
>
> Can you give me some reasons why I should stick to keeping them in one
> server?. and why I shouldn't move them into different servers. May be I
> can
> convince them if there are some solid reasons. By the way, I'm using
> model-glue.
>

Report · Apr 27, 2006

i had a minute and gave this mapping idea a shot. i had a cfc on our nas
drive, mapped it in administrator like so:

/frameworkroot = \\ournasdrive\com\company\framework

then in a cf page running on a differnet machine, did
createObject("component","frameworkroot.mycfc")

and it worked fine

"Marc E" <cf@hifiwebdesign.com> wrote in message
news:e2ovnp$1tg$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> can you just use coldfusion mappings?
>
> like, if cfcs are on \\myoneserver\mycfcroot and you map /mycfcroot to
> that directory, can your cfm pages on server 2 use
> createobject("component","mycfcroot.mycfc");
>
> never tried it, but seems like it should work.
>
> "CFDEBUG" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
> news:e2o2o7$nrp$1@forums.macromedia.com...
>> Thanx Matt for replying. Unfortunately it was not my decision. My company
>> wanted to do it like that for security reasons. They wanted to make
>> coldfusion
>> apps like Java 3-tier with jsps in one server and servlets/ejbs in
>> another, if
>> possible. I thought that it would be like making it unncessarily complex.
>> But
>> didn't have facts to prove it.
>>
>> Can you give me some reasons why I should stick to keeping them in one
>> server?. and why I shouldn't move them into different servers. May be I
>> can
>> convince them if there are some solid reasons. By the way, I'm using
>> model-glue.
>>
>
>

Report · Apr 27, 2006

CFDEBUG wrote:
> Thanx Matt for replying. Unfortunately it was not my decision. My company
> wanted to do it like that for security reasons.

I'd be curious to hear the reasoning behind the argument that putting
your CFCs on another server necessarily gives you increased security.

> They wanted to make coldfusion
> apps like Java 3-tier with jsps in one server and servlets/ejbs in another, if
> possible. I thought that it would be like making it unncessarily complex. But
> didn't have facts to prove it.

More moving parts = more complex. I guess I'd just have to hear a
compelling argument for doing this other than a blanket "because it's
more secure" statement. The main reason this sort of setup is used in
the Java world is for distributed computing purposes, not for security.
I'm not saying there is absolutely no security benefit for doing
this--conceptually one could argue this is similar to putting your
database server behind a firewall so it can't be hit by the outside
world--but that reason alone doesn't make the argument complete in my mind.

> Can you give me some reasons why I should stick to keeping them in one
> server?. and why I shouldn't move them into different servers. May be I can
> convince them if there are some solid reasons. By the way, I'm using model-glue.

Biggest one I can think of would be performance, not to mention
deployment complexities, increased hardware requirements (if your CFCs
are on a server other than the ones your CFML pages are on, you better
be darn sure you have redundancy there!), and increased licensing costs
for CF (different physical server = another CF license). I'd be very
surprised if you didn't take a big performance hit calling the objects
from another server, but I'd have to experiment with timing the mapping
process Marc E outlines. I guess to me you're asking why you shouldn't
move them onto different servers, when the real question in my mind is
why you *should*. Security alone doesn't sell it for me, but there may
be other reasons in your particular environment why this makes sense.

Matt

--
Matt Woodward
mpwoodward@gmail.com
Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion

Report · Apr 27, 2006

Matt, I think I'm going to go convince my people not to proceed in that direction. I have everything written using model-glue framework and I don't want to complicate stuff just to adhere to the policy that may not apply to all languages since not all languages follow the same architecture.

Thanx Marc. At the worst case, if I have to go with that architecture, I will look into your idea. Looks pretty simple.

Thanx guys for your suggestions. They are helpful.

Report · Apr 27, 2006

we've actually been trying to go in the opposite direction, mostly for ease
of deployments. we have a cluster of CF servers, and every time we do a code
push, we have to migrate to all servers. it's annoying and prone to
problems.

We want to move all our code onto one machine, such that no webserver has
any code on it at all. we deploy code to one machine, and all webservers on
the cluster benefit from the push. this machine is not web accessible at all
and thus one could say less prone to security problems than a webserver is,
although i'm not sure that's such a good reason. mostly for us it's ease of
deployment.

separating normal cfm files from objects seems kind of silly, when if you
want security you'd put all code on a separate, non-web-accessible machine.

thanks to CF mapping, you can just point "/" to the code root of hte machine
on which the code lives, and all is well with the world.
This is actually how we have our internal environment set up, it's just our
production environment where our host is a pain in the ass about it.

i'd be extremely surprised to see a performance problem with this setup.
It's not like the web servers are in philly and the code servers are in
taiwan, sending thousands of bytes per second. you've probably literally got
the webserver sitting right beside the server on which the code lives. it's
virtually the same thing as just keeping CF on the C drive and all the code
on the D Drive (assuming disk speeds on the machines are adequate).

"CFDEBUG" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:e2qi60$1s5$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Matt, I think I'm going to go convince my people not to proceed in that
> direction. I have everything written using model-glue framework and I
> don't
> want to complicate stuff just to adhere to the policy that may not apply
> to all
> languages since not all languages follow the same architecture.
>
> Thanx Marc. At the worst case, if I have to go with that architecture, I
> will
> look into your idea. Looks pretty simple.
>
> Thanx guys for your suggestions. They are helpful.
>

Report · Apr 28, 2006

Marc E wrote:
> we've actually been trying to go in the opposite direction, mostly for ease
> of deployments. we have a cluster of CF servers, and every time we do a code
> push, we have to migrate to all servers. it's annoying and prone to
> problems.

Actually that's exactly the way we have our new high availability
environment configured. All the code runs off an EMC device. Not sure
why I didn't draw this parallel yesterday with running the CFML on one
server and the CFCs on another server--as long as you have a
sufficiently fast network (we're on gigabit) and device/drives (our
stuff is fiber channel), then as you mention below performance probably
isn't an issue. I'd be curious if doing this over 100 megabit with more
low-end hardware would perform as well as having things on a local
drive, however.

> We want to move all our code onto one machine, such that no webserver has
> any code on it at all. we deploy code to one machine, and all webservers on
> the cluster benefit from the push. this machine is not web accessible at all
> and thus one could say less prone to security problems than a webserver is,
> although i'm not sure that's such a good reason. mostly for us it's ease of
> deployment.

Yep, very true, and although the NAS/DAS device isn't *directly*
accessible via the web, remember that's it's accessible by the user
that's being used by the web site users, so there isn't a huge security
benefit here vs. having the code locally. You're absolutely right

> separating normal cfm files from objects seems kind of silly, when if you
> want security you'd put all code on a separate, non-web-accessible machine.

Yeah, this is where we head was earlier in the discussion--putting the
CF "pages" on one server and the CFCs on another just seemed a bit wacky
to me.

> thanks to CF mapping, you can just point "/" to the code root of hte machine
> on which the code lives, and all is well with the world.
> This is actually how we have our internal environment set up, it's just our
> production environment where our host is a pain in the ass about it.

Right, this is what we do on our production environment but we don't
even use a CF mapping (though you could). We just point our web server
to the EMC device and everything else just falls into place, provided
you've set up the user CF and your web server process (or using "connect
as" in IIS in W2K3) are running as so they have access to the network
storage device.

> i'd be extremely surprised to see a performance problem with this setup.
> It's not like the web servers are in philly and the code servers are in
> taiwan, sending thousands of bytes per second. you've probably literally got
> the webserver sitting right beside the server on which the code lives. it's
> virtually the same thing as just keeping CF on the C drive and all the code
> on the D Drive (assuming disk speeds on the machines are adequate).

True, good point. We have extremely good performance (might even be
*faster* than local drive speed) with our EMC device, and again I'm not
sure why I didn't see this parallel yesterday in the discussions. Blame
it on a very hectic week. ;-)

Matt
--
Matt Woodward
mpwoodward@gmail.com
Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion

Report · Apr 28, 2006

Marc, That was a great idea. So basically if I have a server within vendor dmz and another server within trusted network, I can put the "/" mapping in my vendor dmz server and let it point to all the code in trusted network server and the trusted network server will not have any webserver at all?. So if the user accesses the site, it goes to the vendor dmz server and then it gets the page from trusted network server due to mapping?.

Report · Apr 28, 2006

I think so. also, since the cf files are just byte code when CF actually
gets them, the "code" itself isn't being read from disk except for the first
time it's loaded into the JVM. so in terms of disk reads, it's minimal
except on startup. that is, if my understanding of jvm is correct.

i asked about this on java.programmer, and someone on there said the same
thing you did matt: that reading from the external drive could conceivably
be faster if the drive on that machine is faster, as is apparently typical
with storage type devices. i'm no expert here, though. of course, all fo
this is probably splitting hairs anyway.

"CFDEBUG" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:e2t76e$j1g$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Marc, That was a great idea. So basically if I have a server within vendor
> dmz
> and another server within trusted network, I can put the "/" mapping in my
> vendor dmz server and let it point to all the code in trusted network
> server
> and the trusted network server will not have any webserver at all?. So if
> the
> user accesses the site, it goes to the vendor dmz server and then it gets
> the
> page from trusted network server due to mapping?.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>