We are running SDL Tridion 2013 SP1 with Oracle 11g as the CMS DB and IIS/Tomcat/Oracle 11g on the Presentation Side. Currently the presentation side is comprised of one node/instance of each of the following:
- Web Server (IIS)
- Application Server (Apache Tomcat - 2 instances: 1 for Content Deployer; and 1 for Website)
- Content Broker DB (running on Oracle 11g)
The client has now asked us to propose a solution for High Availability and Disaster Recovery for their CMS as well Website. They plan on implementing Oracle RAC to take care of the database side of the things.
We are thinking of the following solution for the Production environment:
- 2 Web Servers (IIS) load balanced thru a NLB
- 2 Application Servers (Apache Tomcat - each running 2 instances of Tomcat: 1 for Deployer; 1 for website) load balanced thru a NLB
I have read up a several blog posts and articles regarding multiple deployers and no one seems to suit the client's requirements. Based on the this article it is not advised to have multiple deployers trying to publish the same contents. The suggested approach is to have each deployer publish contents for a given publication:
- deployer 1
- publication a
- publication b
- deployer 2
- publication c
- publication d
- etc…
With the above setup if Deployer 2 is offline then there is no way to publish contents from Publications C & D.
One of our suggested solution relies on a shared storage (NAS) shared by all deployers and presentation tomcat instances and then replicated to the DR storage. But this involves a manual change of deployer/tomcat configuration during a DR situation to activate the DR Storage.
The client needs the ability to seemless continue publishing even in case of DR and they have asked for a seemless Production to DR switch over. Please provide any other suggestions of implementing the required.