Development and Testing Environment Recommendations

We are formalizing new development and testing environments for our ColdFusion web sites and I would like to know what recommendations other developers/administrators have regarding server configuration and/or best practices. We are currently running multiple ColdFusion 8 sites (~10) on IIS/Windows. Most of our sites require SSL. We should probably be able to run both SSL and non-SSL versions of the sites on the development environment. We have several new 64-bit servers available for these updated environments. (Additionally, we also develop and administer several Java sites; right now it looks like they will most likely live on their own set of servers.) In an ideal world, do you think we should put both Test and Development environments on one box (using separate IPs such as site-dev.siteUrl and site-test.siteUrl), or create multiple sites using VMware, or utilize two entirely separate servers? And are there considerations for each of these scenarios? Thanks in advance for your insights...

Jess, Have you considered VM? This could solve the problem without needing another server.

> In an ideal world, do you think we should put both Test and Development environments on one box (using separate IPs such as > site-dev.siteUrl and site-test.siteUrl), or create multiple sites using VMware, or utilize two entirely separate servers? And are there > considerations for each of these scenarios? In an ideal world, everything is on a separate physical server, with a redundant backup. But using a single machine or VMs can be suitable. There are, of course, different considerations for all of these scenarios. For example, if you use a single machine, what's the likelihood that a failure in your development environment could cause a resource-based denial of service in your test environment? Do you plan to run load tests in your testing environment? Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ http://training.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite.

We are fortunate enough to operate in an environment where we are alotted ample hardware resources, so we can operate separate physical servers if that's the recommendation. The point about development failures affecting our test environment is well-taken. To date, we've not needed to run load testing on our sites; our sites don't typically experience heavy traffic. Moving forward, we are open to doing things differently or implementing virtualization if the flexibility it allows outweighs the issue raised by Dave. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Just some more things for you to think about... Since I am the one to maintain our environments, I am very fond of virtualization (VMWare in particular) for the simplicity of creating snapshots and being able to roll the servers back to those snapshots so easily. It is also very simple to get new machines up and going by cloning existing machines. Need another webserver to test load balancing? No problem, clone the existing one and you have 2 identical servers with the app already up and running... The only benefit of physical boxes over VMs that I can think of is that everything would be on separate boxes. If the entire VM host goes down, you lose access to all machines on it. In a dev/test environment, that would most likely just mean some dev/testing downtime until they are back up. In production, there should be some kind of fail over anyway. We are fortunate enough to operate in an environment where we are alotted ample hardware resources, so we can operate separate physical servers if that's the recommendation. The point about development failures affecting our test environment is well-taken. To date, we've not needed to run load testing on our sites; our sites don't typically experience heavy traffic. Moving forward, we are open to doing things differently or implementing virtualization if the flexibility it allows outweighs the issue raised by Dave. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

At work, we handle all of our Dev and QA environments on virtual servers so we can set it up exactly like production without buying all of the same hardware twice. At home, I use VMWare Fusion on my Mac to mimic whatever environment I need to when developing/testing. Virtualization gives you the flexibility you will need and is definitely my suggestion. We are formalizing new development and testing environments for our ColdFusion web sites and I would like to know what recommendations other developers/administrators have regarding server configuration and/or best practices. We are currently running multiple ColdFusion 8 sites (~10) on IIS/Windows. Most of our sites require SSL. We should probably be able to run both SSL and non-SSL versions of the sites on the development environment. We have several new 64-bit servers available for these updated environments. (Additionally, we also develop and administer several Java sites; right now it looks like they will most likely live on their own set of servers.) In an ideal world, do you think we should put both Test and Development environments on one box (using separate IPs such as site-dev.siteUrl and site-test.siteUrl), or create multiple sites using VMware, or utilize two entirely separate servers? And are there considerations for each of these scenarios? Thanks in advance for your insights...

Another vote for VM from me. elasticserver.com is great-- I have an paid account there, I want to support them because they are awesome! Another very nice thing is you can test ANYTHING without worrying about a sever failing. Plus, it is very easy to load test an app-- you can limit the memory and cores, then load it up and see what it does. Another thing I have been doing is using ANT to create full applications in a .war file. (you also can do it manually) It allows me to bundle a Railo/BD/ACF WEB-INF folder with my app, and deploy it to and servlet container in VM to test. -- /Kevin Pepperman "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin