Deployment suggestions for load balanced servers

Hi,

I have a website that is hosted on two servers that in turn sit behind a load balancer. We use this configuration more for the purpose of being able to conduct maintenance on each web server without bringing the site down. When we upgrade the site, we take ServerA out of the load balance pool on the LB, and then do our work. We don't have huge traffic, and our existing site is static, and stateless.

My question is, if we use Weceem and a postgresql database as a CMS what would be the ideal deployment options for my scenario? I have a few ideas of my own, but rather than steer the course of the responses, I will hold off, and see what the community members think!

Thanks,

Hi,

I've not done this myself yet. I imagine it would work fine if you bear in mind a database caching.

You will probably have to turn off the Grails 2nd level hibernate caching - otherwise the two servers will have inconsistent data when edits are made. That or you configure it with a distributed cache.

Alternatively you could force it so that always the same server is used for edits, and restart the other server after major edits are made. Not great, but its simpler and depends on your usage patterns (e.g. do you import new content into weceem after having made the changes offline).

Finally, you may find more success without a load balancer (as you say you have low load, this is for downtime prevention) and instead have a front-facing caching web server. This will greatly improve performance of the sites, require less expenditure on hardware, and if configured right could keep running with cached content even if the back end Weceem server is taken down.