Yep...clustered servers are great...but not so if you don’t plan ahead. What most service providers should do in this case is use one server just for that...storing temporary files for sessions and whatnot.
I don’t think my service provider (Fluid Hosting) uses clustering too much...at least I don’t think so. They use H-Sphere to allow their customers to control websites...which is pretty good IMO. I don’t think H-Sphere allows for clustering with H-Sphere, with the exception of database servers which can be clustered pretty easily regardless of the use of H-Sphere or the like.
My advice remains unchanged. If your service provider is unable or unwilling to change their configuration to allow for the saving of session data in such a way so that it’s consistent...then change service providers and find someone who does.
One workaround you could do is change the PHP configuration variable session.use_cookies to 1 in your htaccess file. However, the problem with this is that if you have a visitor who isn’t accepting cookies from your site then it’ll result in a failure to authenticate. So...unless you force everyone to accept cookies from your site, you’re pretty much left with the fact that you need to change servers. Bummer!
Jeff
Quote from: OpenGeek at Jun 24, 2005, 06:40 PM
Actually, no the issue here is that these guys used clustered server environments and thus saving session data to the temporary directory is not a valid action -- it must be saved somewhere specifically or it may not be available on subsequent requests that might get routed to a different server instance. This seems like a big deal when dealing with anyone that uses a clustered web hosting environment and needs to be addressed in the product IMO.
Anyone else have other ideas on this issue? Clustered servers are wonderful to help keep sites stable and I think it’s important that we support such things.
MODX Staff
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