ColdFusion Muse

One Way to Easy Recovery of a Crashed Server

Everyone should have regular backups and a plan for restoring a server if something goes wrong. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that you have a problem with a server where all you have is the old drive with the Coldfusion install directory (c:\cfusionmx7\ for the sake of our scenario). If you have to do a reinstall, is there a way to get back all that careful tuning, datasources (there can be a lot of these), debugging IPs, settings, CFX tags, Mail settings, etc.? Actually it is not as hard as you think.

Do a fresh install to the same location as before (C:\CfusionMX7 in this case) being careful not to overwrite the old directory. You may need to rename that old directory if you are using the same drive over again. Once CF is completely installed and running, stop the server and any associated services like search, odbc server etc. Then install the "old" directory over the new. Use a rename if you like. The main issue is that the old directory should replace the new. Restart the services and log into the CF admin. If the admin fails to come up may have to rerun the "connector" script for your web server (found in CfusionMX7/bin/connetors). These magic scripts set ports and other things that "hook" your Coldfusion server into your web server.

Now before you add mean comments please know that I am aware there are other ways of doing this. You can grab several config files and anything that is an XML file from the old directory and simply copy them into the new directory and it will work. You can use wsconfig to recreate the services - possibly without a reinstall. I'm sure there are clever people out there that have all kinds of nifty tricks. This is just one trick that takes care of this scenario. But this trick is especially useful when you have to walk an inexperienced tech through it over the phone. The concepts are easy to understand and easy to guide someone through.