Can I install Tridion 2013 SP1 with multiple Content Manager Servers

Question

I am looking for a document or solution to install and configure the Tridion 2013 SP1 with multiple Content Manager servers. It is kind of a pool of CM servers to service the requests.

Answer 1

The SDL Live Content documentation has scaling information under "Scaling SDL Tridion" (requires login).

Clustering the Content Manager isn't your only option. You could also look into scaling out the Database, Search, Workflow, or Publishing (as well as Content Delivery).

Edit: Nick points out you cannot scale out the Content Manager Database. My mistake, I misread the following:

Installing database server on a dedicated machine Except in a single-machine setup, always install the Content Manager database on a separate machine. Preferably, this should be a machine with at least 2 GB of RAM that scales up easily, has multiple processors, and has network access in the Gigabit range. Set the default network protocol of the machine to TCP/IP (if you use SQL Server, use the Client Network Utility to do this).

So you can "scale" the database server up rather than out. Basically be careful with terms:

• dedicated, as something on its own server
• up or upscale, referring to threads or upgrading a server (RAM, CPU, etc)
• out or outscale, the multiple servers you were looking for

Answer 2

As Alvin says, you can scale out to multiple Content Manager servers (with a load balancer to manage the traffic to each).

As well as being able to spread the load and provide fault tolerance, scaling out the Content Manager and accessing the CME site through a load balancer allows you to easily put a 'holding page' in place (for the CME interface), if needed.

A holding page can be especially useful during deployments between environments, when you may not want editors to be editing or publishing content. (The administrators doing the deployment can have direct access to one of the Content Manager servers.)

If you do this, and scale out the Content Manager servers, then there are a few things that you will need to look out for:

1. You will need to ensure that the Content Manager Search is configured correctly - implementing a Master and a Slave setup.
2. As the Tridion Content Management Explorer interface is likely to be accessed on a number of URLs (the load balanced one and a direct one (for each server)), you will need to ensure that multiple host headers are configured properly.
3. You will probably need to implement 'sticky sessions' on the load balancer.