Boyzoid's Blog & Stuff

I was asked recently to assist with setting up multiple ColdFusion 9 instances when using Apache as the web server. When using IIS, its pretty easy to run the 'Web Site Configuration' and tell IIS which CF instance to use for which sites, but with Apache, there is a bit more involved...not a whole lot, in my opinion, but there is more. 

Note: This assumes you already have ColdFusion installed and hooked up to Apache.

First, let's create a new ColdFusion Instance. This is easy enough using the CF Administrator. (Yes, I know there are other ways, like deploying CF as a .war file but using CF Administrator is more user friendly). We create a new CF instance by navigating to the 'Enterprise Manager --> Instance Manager' in CF Administrator (you will only see this menu option in Developer and Enterprise editions of ColdFusion).

On the next page, we want to click 'Add New Instance'.

Simply fill out the form, giving the new server a 'name' (you should be able to leave the default Server Directory) and clicking 'Submit'

Now..we wait...this may take a while - once the new instance is created, it should be started automatically and you should be able to hit the CF Administrator for the new instance by going to http://localhost:{port #}/CFIDE/administrator/ where {port #} is the 'HTTP port' shown in the 'Available Servers' list.

NOTE: If, like me, you use ColdFusion debugging, and have specified a debugging port in jvm.config and have other servers running that are using jvm.config at startup, the new instance will not start - to fix this, start the new instance with a different jvm.config file or shutdown any other instances of ColdFusion that are running)

Here is where we need to take a little detour to get the information needed for Apache. If its not already started, fire up the JRun Administrator and browse to http://localhost:8000. You should be prompted for a login (the username should be 'admin' and the password will be the password you specified for CF Administrator when you first installed ColdFusion).

Once you are logged in to JRun admin, you should see a list of available servers (and your new server should be there).

If your new server is not started, start it. Once it has been started, click on the name of your new server. From here click the 'Services' menu item

On the services page, note the 'Proxy Port' specified. Also, if it is not started (which it likely is not), start the 'ProxyService' by clicking the 'play' button.

We can now close the JRun Admin (and stop the service is you so desire) and open up our Apache file used for specifying virtual hosts (depending on the version of Apache, this may be a separate file form main config).

Create a new <virtualHost> block or use an existing one and inside the <virtualHost> block add the following line:

Where {proxy port} is equal to the proxy port we noted in JRun admin for our new instance.

To test that we are using the new instance, lets create a test file in the document root of our virtual host with the following code

When we view the page, we can verify the new instance is being used by looking at the 'rooter' key of the 'coldfusion' structure. In my case, it looks like this:

'Scott_test' was the name I gave my CF Instance (by default ColdFusion will create new instances in a directory under 'servers' with the same name as the instance).

I know this may seem complicated, but after you do it a few times, its pretty easy.

As I mentioned in this post, I described, briefly how my development environment is set up, and how I installed ColdFusion 8 onto the same JRun server where I have ColdFusion 7 installed.  A reader inquired about the JVM and if there are any conflicts.  Well, the answer is no, there are not.  Why?  Well, becasue when you deploy ColdFusion 8 as a .ear file onto a server running ColdFusion 7, JRun will use the JRE specifeid in the java.home variable in {jRun root}/bin/jvm.config, which in my case was 1.4.2_09.

Now, I have been running this configuration since the public beta and have not run into any issues with performance, or even errors occurring when running ColdFusion 8 code.  However, I wanted to set-up my ColdFusion 8 to use the same JRE it would if I had done a different install (stand alone, or multi-server).  This was easy enough as you can create custom jvm.config files and use them to run your JRun 'servers'.

Here's to do it.
Disclaimer: This is for Windows only.  I assume the procedure would be similar in a different environment.

1. Download the latest Java SDK and install it. (You may be able to use the JRE alone, but I didn't test this)
2. Make a copy of jvm.config (located in {JRun root}/bin } and name it jvm_cf8.config. (You can name it whatever you would like, but the rest of the instructions assume you use this name)
3. Change the java.home variable from "C:/JRun4/jre" (It may be different for you) to {new SDK Install path}/jre and save the file.
4. If its running, stop the ColdFusion 8 service.
5. Open a command window and "cd" to {JRun Root}/bin
6. Test the new config by typing jrun -config jvm_cf8.config -start {the name of your ColdFusion 8 server in Jrun}.  If you don't get any errors, you can now set up your Windows service to use this config file.
7. Pressing crtl+c should shut down the JRun server you just started.
8. Type the following to remove the windows service jrunsvc -remove {the name of your ColdFusion 8 server in JRun}
9. Now you need to reinstall the Windows service and tell it to use the new config jrunsvc -install {the name of your ColdFusion 8 server in JRun} -config jvm_cf8.config.
10. You should now be able to start ColdFusion 8 from the Services MMC in Windows.

To verify you are using the updated JVM, log into the ColdFusion Administrator for ColdFusion 8 and go to 'System Information' (It's the blue icon on the top right side of the page) and check the JRE and JVM values.