Content Porter error while importing using LB URL

Question

Using Tridion Sites 9.5.

We got a scaled-up CM servers setup and use a load balancer to distribute the load on CM servers. When content porter is connected with LB URL for importing a package, the import process is often failing with the reason "invalid import package". If the URL of the individual CM instance is used in the content porter, the portering succeeds without any error. Hence there is no issue with the package itself. We don't prefer directly connecting with individual CM instance for security reasons.

It looks like content porter doesn't always maintain "sticky session" with the same CM instance while using the load balancer URL. The package is uploaded on one CM instance and but the sub-sequent processing of the package doesn't always run on the same CM instance which is resulting in "invalid import package".

Any fix for this issue? I see an article in SDL documentation that talks about high availability storage. Can the mentioned solution fix this issue? If so, can you please explain what will then happen on each CM instance? Will the import package be uploaded on each CM instance?

Answer 1

For the scaled-out Load Balanced CME setup.

In the Tridion.ContentManager.config apart from enabling useBinaryContentProvider=true attribute, we also need to set this binaryContentStorage element and set its temporaryFolder attribute to a shared network location or you can also configure it to store the packages in the Amazon S3 bucket.

Configuring a shared network temporary location for uploads to the Core Service

Configuring a temporary location for uploads to the Core Service in the Amazon Cloud

Both settings are required. hence you need to ensure the path to the uploaded binary will be accessible from any instance.

Also, Ensure stick sessions are enabled for the CME LB endpoint.

The reason is that the sticky sessions are enabled per the WCF client. In order to create a multimedia component (or TBB), two WCF clients are used: one for uploading a binary and another one for creating an item in TCM. These two clients may "stick" to different CM instances;