Re: Deploying multiple instances of OfBiz

[Jonathon -- Improov <jo...@improov.com>]

Hi Torsten,

I was hoping to install 3 separate instances of OFBiz: 1 for development, 1 for production, and 1 
for staging. All using different databases.

 From my initial prototyping, I can safely say I'll be able to use mod_jk to link to different 
OFBiz instances. Simply have a single AJP <Connector> (default port 8009), and multiple virtual 
hosts in Tomcat's server.xml. The virtual hosts in your Apache httpd.conf should correspond to the 
virtual hosts in Tomcat's server.xml exactly.

(I had to use Apache's SSL to front OpenTaps because OpenTaps's SSL doesn't work out-of-box with 
Firefox 2.0.)

As for hosting multiple instances of OFBiz on a single server for multiple customers, I don't 
think that's very cost-effective. The hosting cost will be high, given that a single instance of 
OFBiz can take up substantial amount of RAM. If you can sell each hosted instance for a high 
enough price, your business model may work out.

Still, David is right (http://www.mail-archive.com/ofbiz-user@incubator.apache.org/msg02469.html). 
OFBiz's main market consists of customers who will pay substantial sums to customize OFBiz. It'll 
be hard to sell a "one size fits all" OFBiz to many customers. You can still try, but you'll need 
to do a LOT of work determining "what size/color fits all", and cut OFBiz down to that size/color. 
You want to cooperate on this?

OFBiz is certainly not built for cost-effective multi-hosting like Apache (virtual host concept). 
A single instance of OFBiz cannot serve more than 1 customer/site/domain. But someone's idea of 
getting OFBiz to listen for which customer's database to connect to will work, provided we put in 
the effort to rewire OFBiz. Your best bet for now is still to use multiple instances of OFBiz.

Use a separate database for each customer at first. Safer. Then slowly move your development 
towards consolidation into a single OFBiz instance, still using multiple databases. Finally, move 
towards the single database consolidation.

Obviously, OFBiz was not meant to be hosted for multiple customers. Wasn't built that way from 
ground up.

IMO, I do believe that it is possible to rewire OFBiz for your multi-customer business model. I 
just completed a product that does just that: use very little resource overhead to cater to 
thousands of customers. But I built the framework for such multiplicity from ground up.

If you want to host OFBiz that way, it really is up to your own initiative to rewire OFBiz for ASP 
model. We could start a new initiative to say ASP-enable OFBiz.

Jonathon

Torsten Schlabach wrote:
> Hi Jonathon,
> 
> this is a subject which was come up multiple times already, 
> unfortunately without a good solution IMO.
> 
> There had been a more recent discussion about that subject, linking back 
> to some older things:
> 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/ofbiz-user@incubator.apache.org/msg02425.html
> 
> I think that discussion is worth reading all the way through. For me, 
> the most interesting sentence in their way:
> 
>  > You should perhaps look for subjects on "changing delegator".
> 
> That lead me in the proper direction what to search for.
> 
> But reading your post, I am not exactly sure what you're trying to 
> achieve. You say, you would like to install multiple instances of OFBiz 
> into the same webserver.
> 
> Would that be entirely unrelated instances with entirely unrelated 
> databases?
> 
> If yes, why do you want them in the same webserver?
> 
> Sorry, I am just trying to understand what you are going after because I 
> think I might have a similar problem and I am currently working on it, 
> but I want to make sure I have a good understanding of what your problem 
> is.
> 
> Regards,
> Torsten
> 
> Jonathon -- Improov schrieb:
>> I found an old post by Si Chen (subject "[OFBiz] Users - deploying 
>> multiple instances of OfBiz" at 
>> http://lists.ofbiz.org/pipermail/users/2004-January/002735.html).
>>
>> I'm wondering if anyone has found a way to install multiple virtual 
>> instances of OFBiz in one single webserver. Is it worth doing that? 
>> Perhaps there's not enough shareable components to justify effort? I 
>> understand that some components are just not robustly coded to handle 
>> multiple instances of OFBiz in a secure fashion (eg session management 
>> component?).
>>
>> Heck, even Log4J doesn't do well as a shared component, last I saw.
>>
>> I need to install several instances on 1 machine on port 8080, 
>> preferably. If not possible, is there any way for a single Apache to 
>> link to different AJP/mod_jk ports coming from multiple instances of 
>> OFBiz (stand-alone with embedded webserver)? Done AJP/mod_jk before, 
>> but forgot whether it's possible to link to multiple AJP/mod_jk ports.
>>
>> Does anyone have an reasonably confident figure for the range of 
>> memory usage (lower and upper limits) that a single instance of OFBiz 
>> uses?
>>
>> Jonathon
> 
>