Thread

We’re in the final phases of moving our site to a new hosting provider. The environment consists of three load balanced web front ends and two databases servers that are replicated.

The issue we’re running into now is that when we try to log into the CMS the first attempt fails but the second attempt is successful. This is a recurring theme whenever we try to make changes to weblogs or other changes in the CMS.

What could be causing this problem? This is major issue that we need to find some resolution to. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, Andy,

Can you explain how you have EE installed? Is it a single installation? Or do you have multiple installations you are trying to split the load between?  Knowing the details of how you have this setup will be vital to troubleshooting.

Thank you.

Hi Lisa,

At the moment we’re in the testing phase. The one installation we have has been copied to the 3 front end servers and replication occurs between them every 3-5 minutes. There’s a load balancer/firewall appliance that determines which server the user hits. We’re running EE 1.7.0 Build 20101018.

We were planning to purchase licenses for two of the servers once testing was complete. Could that be the issue?

Let me know if you require further information and thanks for your quick reply.

Hi, Andy,

Your setup is a red flag for me.  First: you would need 3 licenses for that setup.  Second, EE just isn’t intended to work that way.  You can load balance EE (EngineHosting does), but that load balancing should be invisible tot he application; it won’t require multiple sets of files.  That also won’t work because EE can only read from and write to one cache directory, one config file, etc.

Unfortunately, ExpressionEngine just won’t work the way you have it setup, it’s not built to handle things that way.  You’ll need to revisit the load balancing so that you have one set of files and one database, and the load balancing occurs behind EE’s scenes.

Hi Lisa,

This is unfortunate as we’ve already invested a lot of money to move our website. Are they’re any resources that document how to load balance EE in detail. I find that the default statement by most EE developers is to simply use EngineHosting but what if, like us, there’s a need to host our own implementation?

This won’t go down well here. 😊

Hi, Andy,

You might search our archived forums for posts authored by Nevin Lyne (with the keyword “load balanc” leave off the e to get balance and balancing).  He has talked about the EngineHosting setup in detail over the years.

This is really something for a knowledgeable system administrator to implement; it’s definitely beyond what we can offer support for her.

I’m sorry I can’t offer you a more direct solution :(  Do you have any other questions that we could try to help with?

Thanks for your help, Lisa. I’ll forward the info to our consultants and see what they say.

Sounds good Andy, we’re here if you need anything else.