An Architect's View

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An Architect's View

CFML in the Cloud

December 5, 2008 · 7 Comments

I was just reading a couple of blog posts about deploying Open BlueDragon in the cloud (I started with Matt Woodward's extended blog post on cloud computing) and they've gone as far as integrating OpenBD into Elastic Server - a service that lets you easily configure a server instance based on a number of resources. Very impressive. Broadchoice Workspace is deployed on the cloud and whilst most of the machinery is Java/Groovy behind the Flex/AIR application, we also have the iPhone-compatible web version which is powered by CFML. It's a Model-Glue 3 / ColdSpring application that reuses the core Groovy services (via a Spring adapter that Joe Rinehart wrote). So we've been running CFML in the cloud in production for nearly two months now and it's working out really well for us. We're using Railo 3.0, another option for cloud computing. Adobe have said that cloud deployment is something they want to make possible with ColdFusion so at some point we'll have an embarrassment of riches in terms of choices for CFML in the cloud. Who else is using CFML in the cloud today? Who is thinking about doing so?
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Tags: air · broadchoice · coldfusion · flex · hosted · iphone · openbd · oss · railo · saas

7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Johnb // Dec 6, 2008 at 12:56 AM

    Did you see my blog post about stax.net?

  • 2 Joshua Cyr // Dec 6, 2008 at 5:20 AM

    I was looking into it but got hung up on storage. My newb understanding of EC2 is that the best way to store files is S3 or EBS (http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/). For my needs I would have to have basic website functionality where end users upload or ftp files. S3 posed a problem for permanent storage of simple files from ftp though EBS seemed to solve it (with S3 backing up the EBS). S3 could be made to work I am sure, but would have required some re- architecture on my end (yes I am lazy). In the end I went another direction but I think a blog post, article or session about the storage connection options would be very helpful. Especially pros/cons of S3 and EBS for storage.

  • 3 Brian Rinaldi // Dec 6, 2008 at 5:52 AM

    I can't speak to the setup as this was done by a different member of our team, but on my current project at Universal Mind, we have set up a development ColdFusion 8 server at Amazon EC2. This works nicely because the Flex developers all have set up an endpoint for this server and can test against the CF services without needing to set up a local CF instance.

  • 4 John Allen // Dec 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM

    I just downloaded OpenBD and am spending my saturday get my cloud groov on. This stuff is super cool and kinda like "the future".

    Also big praise and shout outs to Matt Woodward for a spectacular admin counsel for OpenBD!

  • 5 Brad // Dec 6, 2008 at 9:49 AM

    stax.net I guess, I'm using AWS EC2 etc... w/ OpenBD at the moment, but:

    Any chance Joe Rinehart will release the Spring adapter for Groovy?

  • 6 Mark Drew // Dec 6, 2008 at 10:58 AM

    I am currently evaluating cloud computing for out CMS, the only thing is is how I want to deploy different websites and provide different SLA's with regards to high capacity profiles for different clients.

    Any tips would be nice ;)

  • 7 Jeffry Houser // Dec 8, 2008 at 8:45 AM


    I felt my comment here was getting a bit too long; so I moved it over to my blog.

    But the gist is, can anyone explain to me what it means to run CF [or any application server] in the cloud? I don't get it.

    http://www.jeffryhouser.com/index.cfm/2008/12/8/Running-ColdFusion-in-the-Cloud--I-dont-get-it

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