Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
Every once in a while I run into customers running 64bit servers. This is far from a daily occurrence, but the frequency is increasing. And so, here's a question for you:
Are you running 64bit servers yet? Do you plan to in the near future? If so, why, and what OS? And if not, why not?
I'm not running any in production right now, and haven't run in to too many clients that are, but there've been a few. My laptop is running on an AMD Turion 64, and I have been thinking about loading up the 64 bit version of XP or Win Server 2003 and doing some performance testing to see how running CF on a 64 bit JVM on top of a 64 bit CPU. So far it hasn't been a high priority because of the low demand, but I see it as being something that is coming. In terms of configurations people are wanting to do, I've had more clients interested in running CF on Java 5 or run CF on top of JBoss than on running CF on a 64 bit CPU server or 64 bit JVM, to be honest.
Our latest server is a 64 bit server, running windows 2003 64 bit edition, and using the 32bit coldfusion. It can be a bit of a pain to get past random gotchas but it has been fine after the initial configuration.
Security. The x86-64 architecture offers per page execute protection which is not present in the i386 architecture. On OS'es that know how to use this that provides another layer of security agains buffer overflows. We currently use it with OpenBSD (N^X) and Windows (DEP). Current prognosis is that early next year CF would start to benefit from the larger single process memory limit of a 64-bit JVM, but currently that is not an issue yet.
We're looking at it but have no immediate plans to do so.
What it all boils down to is that we are not seeing significant improvements in either application performance or stability. I'll keep an eye on it every few months, but until migration offers a very compelling reason to switch, I'll leave well enough alone.
Switching OS's ( and 32 to 64 bit is a switch ) is like dating a new girl. You want the new hotness, but you know it's going to cost you lots of money, time, effort and pain...and at the end you're not even sure you'll get lucky. I'll stay with the girl I brought to the dance -- she's not the hottest, but she's cute and I understand her. :)
am I the only one who hasn't had a problem with 64bit servers? I'm running two 64bit Windows 2003 Servers, both running CFMX7 Enterprise Edition ... thus far, they've been working flawlessly. I had that small issue with IIS running 32 bit applications, but I found Ben's entry showing how to allow it ... My other server is running Windows 2003 Server 64 bits, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, with 32 Gigs of RAM ... also, running perfectly.
Can't complaint really... it was a smooth transition
I am running CF7 (32bit) on top of Win2003 64bit (dual AMD64 dual core chips). Although it took a bit of tweaking to get it working.
Why have I moved to 64bit? Shouldn't we be asking ourselves why we haven't moved beyond 64bit yet (let alone why people haven't even adopted 64bit as a standard many years ago). I'm a huge Sci-Fi fan, so I often cringe when I read older books that show us being far more advanced for today's timeframe.
We are rolling out a large scale OLAP olution using MS SQL 2005. It's all based on 64 bit servers because we wanted extra RAM to get the cubes to process fast. We can run both the OLAP server and the regular RDBMS on the same boxes. We have a couple of front end 32 bit servers providing web access to various tools and reports. We're planning on putting CF onto these as our front end reporting tools and web based diagnostics for the reporting systems are all written in CF.
We are running some linux machines in production with 64-Bit RH EL4, CFMX7 in Jrun config, 32-bit jvm 1.5 and 64-Bit Apache. Looks like we are the only ones who have this config running. We had all sorts of problems before production, but now it is all solved and running.
Yes. We are running with two 64 bit web servers and a 64 bit SQL 2005 server. All of our servers including many other sites we run that do not use CFMX are 64 bit. We standardized on 64 bit servers last summer because other non-cfmx systems can take advantage of the 64 bit abilities.
We would love it if CFMX offically supported a 64 bit jvm because the inability to get much more than 1.3 GB of RAM for the 32 BIT JVM is the only reason we need more than one CFMX server.
we're running a pure 64-bit RHEL4 box and it was a big hassle to get CF7 to run decently. vspider doesn't work at all. 64-bit support for ColdFusion is really one of the biggest features i was hoping for for Scorpio
Do you have any more info on how you get it running with a 64bit jvm? Have you blogged it? I've not had much experience of dealing with the jvm.
I've got a 64 bit windows 2k3 server which I want to run with CF7. I'll try to get it running with Ben's method, but I'd be keen to improve performance if I can get it running as 64 bit
Installing JRun on Windows 2003x64 and JDK 1.6 Prereqs JRun 4.0 updater 6 Sun 64 bit JDK1.6 JavaService compiled for x64: http://forge.objectweb.org/project/shownotes.php?r... Install Jrun and configure JavaService.exe Install JRun with Updater 6 Set up JavaService to launch JRun
get JavaService and unzip to a temp dir Rename JavaService.exe to your service name (myservice.exe) copy myservice.exe to c:\jrun4\bin Start JRun admin to create your JRun instances. Run this from c:\jrun4\lib java -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -Djmx.invoke.getters="true" -jar jrun.jar start admin Using the JRun admin (//localhost:8000) Create your jrun server Create a system NT env var JAVA_HOME and set it to the location of the installed JDK, ex: c:/jdk6/jre Create a .bat file and run it with this content in c:\jrun4\bin
SET jvmdll=C:\jdk1.6.0_01\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll SET jrunjar=c:\JRun4\lib\jrun.jar SET jrunhome=c:\JRun4 SET JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.6.0_01 SET toolsjar=%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar SET rtjar14=C:\jre1.4\jre\lib\rt.jar SET jrhf=C:\JRun4\lib\jrun-hotfix-64008.jar set slib=c:\JRun4\servers\lib SET CPATH="%toolsjar%;%jrunjar%;%rtjar14%" myservice.exe -uninstall myserver "myservice.exe" -install myserver "%jvmdll%" -Djava.class.path="%CPATH%" -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -Djmx.invoke.getters="true" -start jrunx.kernel.JRun -params "start" "Bullhorn_1" -stop jrunx.kernel.JRun -method stop -params "myserver" "stop"
Run wsconfig.exe, make sure you use JDK 1.6 or you'll get mbean errors
http://developer.fusium.com/FUblog/index.cfm?mode=...
http://developer.fusium.com/FUblog/index.cfm?mode=...
I am running a 64 Bit Server with VMWare running 32 Bit virtual Servers inside.
Does that count?
Yes.
> If so, why, and what OS?
Security. The x86-64 architecture offers per page execute protection which is not present in the i386 architecture. On OS'es that know how to use this that provides another layer of security agains buffer overflows. We currently use it with OpenBSD (N^X) and Windows (DEP).
Current prognosis is that early next year CF would start to benefit from the larger single process memory limit of a 64-bit JVM, but currently that is not an issue yet.
What it all boils down to is that we are not seeing significant improvements in either application performance or stability. I'll keep an eye on it every few months, but until migration offers a very compelling reason to switch, I'll leave well enough alone.
Switching OS's ( and 32 to 64 bit is a switch ) is like dating a new girl. You want the new hotness, but you know it's going to cost you lots of money, time, effort and pain...and at the end you're not even sure you'll get lucky. I'll stay with the girl I brought to the dance -- she's not the hottest, but she's cute and I understand her. :)
My other server is running Windows 2003 Server 64 bits, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, with 32 Gigs of RAM ... also, running perfectly.
Can't complaint really... it was a smooth transition
Why have I moved to 64bit? Shouldn't we be asking ourselves why we haven't moved beyond 64bit yet (let alone why people haven't even adopted 64bit as a standard many years ago). I'm a huge Sci-Fi fan, so I often cringe when I read older books that show us being far more advanced for today's timeframe.
We would love it if CFMX offically supported a 64 bit jvm because the inability to get much more than 1.3 GB of RAM for the 32 BIT JVM is the only reason we need more than one CFMX server.
Anyways, I've have CF7 running with the 64 bit JVM on W2k3 x64.
Here's how:
c:\JRun4\lib>java -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -Djmx.invoke.getters="true" -jar jrun.jar -start cfusion
Obviously you need to edit jvm.config to use the 64bit JRE.
Do you have any more info on how you get it running with a 64bit jvm? Have you blogged it? I've not had much experience of dealing with the jvm.
I've got a 64 bit windows 2k3 server which I want to run with CF7. I'll try to get it running with Ben's method, but I'd be keen to improve performance if I can get it running as 64 bit
Thanks
Prereqs
JRun 4.0 updater 6
Sun 64 bit JDK1.6
JavaService compiled for x64: http://forge.objectweb.org/project/shownotes.php?r...
Install Jrun and configure JavaService.exe
Install JRun with Updater 6
Set up JavaService to launch JRun
get JavaService and unzip to a temp dir
Rename JavaService.exe to your service name (myservice.exe)
copy myservice.exe to c:\jrun4\bin
Start JRun admin to create your JRun instances. Run this from c:\jrun4\lib java -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -Djmx.invoke.getters="true" -jar jrun.jar start admin
Using the JRun admin (//localhost:8000) Create your jrun server
Create a system NT env var JAVA_HOME and set it to the location of the installed JDK, ex: c:/jdk6/jre
Create a .bat file and run it with this content in c:\jrun4\bin
SET jvmdll=C:\jdk1.6.0_01\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll
SET jrunjar=c:\JRun4\lib\jrun.jar
SET jrunhome=c:\JRun4
SET JAVA_HOME=C:\jdk1.6.0_01
SET toolsjar=%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar
SET rtjar14=C:\jre1.4\jre\lib\rt.jar
SET jrhf=C:\JRun4\lib\jrun-hotfix-64008.jar
set slib=c:\JRun4\servers\lib
SET CPATH="%toolsjar%;%jrunjar%;%rtjar14%"
myservice.exe -uninstall myserver
"myservice.exe" -install myserver "%jvmdll%" -Djava.class.path="%CPATH%" -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false -Djmx.invoke.getters="true" -start jrunx.kernel.JRun -params "start" "Bullhorn_1" -stop jrunx.kernel.JRun -method stop -params "myserver" "stop"
Run wsconfig.exe, make sure you use JDK 1.6 or you'll get mbean errors