Standalone CQ5 publish instances without cluster

Question

I am looking for the best solution for having multiple publish instances. I tried shared nothing and shared datastore configurations.

Is there any advantages or disadvantages of having 2 or more publish instances without cluster setup? In such a configuration how can I start a new publish instance? I mean how I should replicate the data from the author when I start a new publish instance (probably from backup), what are the best practices for this. How to solve reverse replication issues, so while I starting a new instance, other publish instance might get some new user generated data which must be replicated to the new publish instance too. What is your experience in this topic?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

1. Multiple publish instances allow you to use a load balancer & increase the amount of concurrent users your site can serve.
2. Replcation of content can be done in the standard way, using CRX Package replcation or the Activation tree, once you've set up a replication agent per instance.
3. You shouldn't run into too much difficulty with content generated while the instance is being set up, as once the instance is up & running, you can just activate it in the normal way. (If you think it will be an issue, you could probably set-up the replication agent first, so that new content is queued while the instance is being set-up, though I couldn't see why you would need to do this).