Saving costs in Linux environments while still using a stable server platform for ColdFusion

Viewing By Entry

Saving costs in Linux environments while still using a stable server platform for ColdFusion

I began this as a comment to Matt Woodward's blog entry on ColdFusion start scripts on Ubuntu Linux. I just wanted to add some links, but it became lengthy and is better suited as a blog post of my own.

I'm not a Ubuntu user, but strictly Red Hat, Fedora, or Red Hat clones. I just wanted to post some related links for Red Hat users.

On the topic of running ColdFusion on "unsupported" Linux distributions, I recommend using Red Hat clones such as CentOS, rather than bleeding edge distributions if you absolutely cannot run a distro supported for use with ColdFusion by Adobe.

Fedora Core Linux, for example, is a bleeding edge distribution and is not appropriate as a production server even though it is sponsored by Red Hat. For a server you want stability with a well tested suite of packages rather than a distro that has all the bells and whistles but hasn't been put through its paces or tightened up as much the stable commercial release.

CentOS is built from the same source as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Effectively CentOS is RHEL, except that CentOS is free and supported by the community. This is possible because under the GPL, Red Hat must make its source available, and CentOS takes advantage of that. I'm not bashing Ubuntu or other distros here, but CentOS is a recommended stable OS that is appropriate as a production server, and I've had some Red Hat instructors tell me so off the record.

Since ColdFusion is QA'd on RHEL you can feel confident that a Red Hat clone will be as reliable as RHEL itself, even if that OS doesn't show up on the ColdFusion System Requirements. Still, however, should anyone using a clone need to seek ColdFusion Support from Adobe, you may be asked to first reproduce the problem on RHEL itself.

A good use of Red Hat clones for a small shop would be to use the clones for development and staging/QA of ColdFusion web applications, then host the final application on a paid RHEL server. This way you can save costs on non-production environments.

The same argument applies to clones of SuSe Linux Enterprise Server as well, although since I'm not a SuSe fan I can't name any of their clones.

posted on 20 October, 2006 at 12:54 PM.
ColdFusion, Linux | Comments (13)

Comments

Thanks Steven--I should have made it clear that I'm using Ubuntu as my development setup, not in production. I completely agree that you should always use supported environments (or "near supported" environments--good comments on CentOS and its relationship to RHEL) for production servers. I've had great luck with CF on Ubuntu so far for development purposes though.

comment by Matt Woodward, posted at 10/20/06 1:36 PM

Steven,

I'd also agree with your comment. For instance I'd much prefer to run ColdFusion on Apache Tomcat or JBoss in production, but it's not a supported configuration so I wouldn't even think about trying to push that at work for production use.

I have to admit I got a really bad taste of Linux from RedHat because of the way that RPM's work (dependecy hell, esp with all of the 8,000 different versions of glibc) when Linux was still in it's infancy and switched to FreeBSD because of it's amazing ports system. Ubuntu is what has brought me back to Linux recently, and given that apt is similar to the ports system in FreeBSD, I dig it. I really doubt I'll use anything related to RedHat (on my own time) anytime soon again in all honesty other than JBoss.

comment by Brandon Harper, posted at 10/20/06 5:30 PM

Thanks for the info on CentOS and RHEL. You confirmed what I was interpreting on other web site.s I'm looking at using CentOS for a new production server. Mike

comment by Michael Clark, posted at 10/26/06 1:09 PM

If you are new on Linux and want to try a distro for your CF installation, CentOS would be a good idea. But what about a server solution such as a huge, big, stable, perfect, known, popular, etc. etc. Debian?

I also can not suggest Ubuntu for production but Debian must be also considered a real production solution because of its nature.

comment by O?uz Demirkap?, posted at 11/16/06 1:17 PM

If you'd like to install and configure Oracle on CentOS, and use it with ColdFusion, check out this article by Nitai Aventaggiato:

Installing ColdFusion and Oracle database 10g on CentOS
http://blog.econtentpark.com/permalinks/2007/01/15...

comment by Steven, posted at 1/15/07 2:05 PM

Has anyone ever gotten CFMX 6.1 running on CentOS 3.8 or 4? While I am no Linux guru, I have been around the block a number of times and am fairly proficient at ferreting out dependency issues and getting software installed. However, I just cannot get CFMX 6.1 running on CentOS 3.8 or 4... I can get CFMX 7 trial running on it, no problems... Works well... The problem is that my company doesn't want to shell out the upgrade costs on CFMX to go from 6 to 7.

I can generally get around the libc problems but then get bogged down with Java errors... It has been a couple weeks since I last attempted a CFMX 6.1 install and cannot recall the exact lib it was blowing up on. I gave up and loaded CFMX 7... But now the trial will be wrapping up. I loaded 7 just to see if we could get our websites running, we're currently in a Windows environment with CFMX 6.1. But, in the next year or so we really want to explore running CentOS and CFMX, because one day we hope to start also using PHP.

Any help or pointers on a stored bookmark that you have that can guide me would be great. I only found one instance in all my searching online of anyone person actually claiming to have CFMX 6.1 installed on CentOS, but it was CentOS 3.6. I would try that in a minute, if I could get old versions! Anyone know where a repository of 3.x versions are? 2 is a little too old for me:)

Thanks a bunch!
~Paul

comment by Paul, posted at 1/30/07 12:39 PM

Bill Mitchell has published an article for running CFMX 7 on Cent OS 5 (currently unsupported by Adobe):

http://www.billmitchell.org/coldfusion/centos5/mx7...

comment by Steven Erat, posted at 5/25/07 2:48 PM

Here is one from me.

http://howtoforge.com/coldfusion_installation_debi...

I will also publish one for Debian 4 and CF8, when CF8 has been puplished. :)

comment by O?uz Demirkap?, posted at 5/25/07 3:57 PM

Steven,

I took your advice on going for CentOS, but my customer has a system that is currently running on a shared RedHat serber with CF 6.1. They already bought a CF6.1 Licence off e-bay and want us to host them on a dedicated server.

So we are trying to install CFMX6.1 on CentOS 5 and are getting the error:
Error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

We chose CentOS 5 because this is the only free version of Red Hat that supports the RAID card we are using. Should we have chosen a different OS.

What is the best course of action here?

comment by Kevin Roche, posted at 7/5/07 10:14 AM

Kevin,

First, remember that CentOS is a clone of RedHat. Following the CF 7 system requirements for Red Hat, you'll see that RHEL 3 and 4 are supported. The equivalent is Cent OS 3 and 4, but not Cent OS 5 since CF7 does not support RHEL 5.

However, the problem you encountered is due to the version of Install Anywhere used in CF7, which does not work with RHEL5, Cent 5, or Suse 10. To get around the problem you need to do a string replacement on the installer binary file using sed. See this blog entry for how to do it, but you would be better off running Cent 4 rather than Cent 5 in this case.

http://www.talkingtree.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/12/...

comment by Steven Erat, posted at 7/5/07 11:19 AM

Steven,

Thanks for responding. We did already try editing the install as you described but then got the same error when attempting to start CF6.1. I will check if CentOS 4 supports the RAID card we are using but I was also concerned as to if CF6.1 would ever work or if I really needed CF7.

comment by Kevin Roche, posted at 7/5/07 11:58 AM

ColdFusion MX 6.1 did not support RHEL4, so you may not be successful with using it on Cent 4. For Cent 4, CFMX 7 is the better choice.

comment by Steven, posted at 7/5/07 2:50 PM

Unfortunately the network drivers on this new machine don't work with CentOS 4. I have tried unsucessfully to install CF7 on CentOS5 so now I am wondering what OS is supported on CF8.

comment by Kevin Roche, posted at 7/6/07 10:18 AM

Calendar

Search This Site

This is an exact search only

About This Site

I live west of Boston and work for Adobe with ColdFusion and Flex, and specialize in Linux. I'm also interested in travel and science, and I'm studyng photography at CDIA. Curious about my banner image?