September 26, 2005

Post Meta InformationPosted By: Brandon Harper


In general, server setup, tuning, troubleshooting and configuration seem to be one of the least understood tools in a typical ColdFusion developers toolbox. Many leave this up to sysadmins who typically do not have a vested interest in ColdFusion and think that Java and JavaScript are the same thing. Hopefully this list will get you motivated to learn more about the “guts� of JRun.

One thing I’m starting to get pretty decent at is configuring, tuning, and troubleshooting ColdFusion MX servers in everything from standalone mode to multi-instance clustering in a multi-tiered scenario. I would not of been able to learn this nearly as quickly (and by quickly, I mean steadily over several years) if it weren’t for the great number of blog posts and articles out there about this particular issue. Granted it’s not what I do full-time, but I think I have a good grasp on it at this point (and I also have a background in Unix, Sysadmin, Networking, etc).

I’m asked frequently to document this sort of thing to which my reply is usually something to the effect of “It’s all over the net. You just have to sit down and learn JRun, how a JVM works, etc.. it’s not just something you just can figure out in 10 minutes from a single source of documentation.” Over the years I’ve kept a good number of bookmarks to reference when trying to troubleshoot a server hanging or simply when setting up a new server or server environment, and thought I’d post them all in one place for anyone else trying to get a grasp on how to setup JRun clustering, how to tune ColdFusion, etc.

I don’t have any links in particular to learn what a JVM is, what the various stages of generation are, how garbage collection works, etc, but if anyone has these or any other links which belong here, let me know and I’ll put them up. I apologize that most of these are ColdFusion MX 6.1 links, but I’ve been collecting them for quite some time and I don’t think that much of the fundamental technology has changed in 7.0 other than it being a lot easier to manage instances.

Okay time to stop being superfluous and get to business. In no particular order:

Clustering & Scaling ColdFusion MX

Tuning & Troubleshooting ColdFusion MX

Java Tuning Fundamentals

Miscellaneous

  • Making Persistent CFCs Thread Safe
  • Restarting ColdFusion MX Programmatically
  • SeeFusion - A great product to actively watch ColdFusion/JRun servers, kill long running threads manually, etc. Not a replacement for thread dumps or adding extra information to the JRun metrics logging when doing load testing, but it works great in combination with them. Disclaimer: I tried it out briefly once upon a time, but haven’t used it in awhile nor have purchased a license for it, yet.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m sure I’m missing plenty of other great resources, so if you have any, please leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.



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9 Comments »

  1. Good job! And you’re right. Learning to tune ColdFusion isn’t easy or something you can do in 10 minutes or a day.

    A couple good links on GC:
    http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/reference/whitepapers/index.html#6
    http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/index.html

    Comment by Tom — September 27, 2005 @ 4:28 am

  2. ya know, I’m no slouch on a computer- I an an analyst for the missile defense agency- I don’t understand a single thing on this entire page….

    Comment by Ci$co — September 27, 2005 @ 5:04 am

  3. Well done Brandon. Nice survey of clustering and performance related articles. I usually turn to Brandon Purcell’s (and Frank DeRienzo’s) articles for architectural considerations of complex clustering scenarios, and to Pete Freitag’s articles for JVM and GC tuning information.

    Clustering in CFMX 7 has abstracted much of the guts of how to set up a cluster. Where CFMX 6.1 was much more hands on tinkering, CFMX 7’s Enterprise Manager and Instance Manager make setting up clusters much more practical and intuitive, and its not absolutely necessary to know all the details found in Purcell’s early articles unless you want to have a more academic understanding of how it works. There remain some features I’d like to see regarding better post-configuation mangement of JRun/CF clusters, but cluster configuration in CFMX 7 should be substantially easier than CFMX 6.1.

    Comment by Steven Erat — September 27, 2005 @ 5:32 am

  4. Great post Brandon - went right into my del.icio.us bookmarks!

    Comment by Pete Freitag — September 27, 2005 @ 5:33 am

  5. Tom:

    Thanks for the links. I also added a few other Java specific resources.

    Steven:

    Good point about the post configuration– that reminds me of at least one blog entry I need to write sometime. I added a link to setting up different JVM arguments for different instances as that was one thing which it reminded me of.

    Pete:

    Thanks!

    Comment by Brandon Harper — September 27, 2005 @ 8:05 am

  6. So what exactly do you have issues with or do the “gurus” have iusses with with my article?

    robi

    Comment by robi — September 28, 2005 @ 6:37 pm

  7. Hey Robi,

    Thanks for stopping by. I found your post to be informative myself, and it was among the first on ColdFusion MX tuning in general.

    For an example of what I was referring to, check the comments section here.

    Comment by Brandon Harper — September 28, 2005 @ 7:20 pm

  8. it would be nice if he commented what was incorrect especially since i made him aware of the subject originally. oh well. anyways i have a much more detailed document ill put up in a couple of weeks that explains more about the heap etc.

    Comment by robi — October 3, 2005 @ 3:37 pm

  9. Brandon,

    It seems Steven has deleted mine and his own comments on his site. So what other “MM tuning guru’s” have mixed reviews?

    Comment by robi — October 11, 2005 @ 9:06 am

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