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Cluster Configuration

If you run dotCMS on a server with a single interface and ip address all you have to do to configure clustering is to configure the following in the dotmarketing-config.properties file.

Change
DIST_INDEXATION_ENABLED=false
To
DIST_INDEXATION_ENABLED=true

You must also set the DIST_INDEXATION_SERVER_ID. This should be a sequential number for each server in the cluster.

So the first server would get DIST_INDEXATION_SERVER_ID=1

and a second server would get DIST_INDEXATION_SERVER_ID=2

Finally you need to tell each server how many servers are in the cluster.

So for the above example you would set DIST_INDEXATION_SERVERS_IDS=1,2 (This is comma separated list of server ids (integers))

There are a few directory which also must be shared if you are running in a cluster.

1. Assets Directory configured in the dotmarketing-config.properties file if necessary
2. The reports directory if using reports

If you have a multihomed machine meaning a server with multiple ip addresses you must also configure common/ext-ejb/cache-configuration-cluster.xml to bind to the proper interface.

Clustering Network Requirements

dotCMS clustering uses UDP and multicast traffic.  Due to the complexity of most networks, we only recommend a clustering solution in which the servers share a dedicated physical network for intra-cluster communication.  If using two cluster nodes, this can be a crossover cable between the servers.  If using more than two cluster nodes, a dedicated switch must be used.  We do not recommend clusters segmented by VLANs.  In the cache-configuration-cluster.xml, the bind_addrs attribute must be set to explicitly use the dedicated interface. These interfaces must not be used for anything other than the cache clustering communication.

In the cache-configuration-cluster.xml look for the UDP config and add the attribute bind_addr="{ipaddress}"

<UDP bind_addr="192.168.1.2" mcast_addr="228.1.2.3" mcast_port="48866"
     ip_ttl="64" ip_mcast="true" ...