tracker issue : CF-3783364

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Title:

Please enable some form of metrics/monitoring for the CF10/11 web server connector pooling

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Status/Resolution/Reason: To Fix//Investigate

Reporter/Name(from Bugbase): Charlie Arehart / Charlie Arehart (Charlie Arehart)

Created: 06/30/2014

Components: Installation/Config, Connector

Versions: 11.0

Failure Type: Enhancement Request

Found In Build/Fixed In Build: CF11_Final /

Priority/Frequency: Trivial / Unknown

Locale/System: English / Win 2008 Server

Vote Count: 18

Please enable some form of metrics/monitoring for the CF10/11 web server connector pooling, something that would report in CF how many connections are currently open in the connectory, and for how long. 

This information could be reported in the form of a page in the CF Admin, or via logging or a metrics command-line tool (or both). While someone may be tempted to put it in the CF Server Monitor, that will not help those using CF Standard, and this problem is too important for this information to be lost and viewable only in the monitor (unless, again, you may do it in logging or a command-line tool AS WELL).

Right now, we are operating in the dark, having to go on recommendations in Adobe CF Team blog entries to guess at what may be good values, for changes in the worker properties:

worker.cfusion.max_reuse_connections
worker.cfusion.connection_pool_size
worker.cfusion.connection_pool_timeout

and the server.xml maxthreads value on the Connector element.

As I have discussed in another feature request I just posted (https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=selectBug&CFGRIDKEY=3783361), many people are having issues with the default values for the web server connector settings in CF 10 and 11, so much so that Adobe has created blog entries for CF10 and 11 recommending changes (which I point to there)..

If instead we had insight into the connections, we could then be far better-informed to help improve the settings. 

Better still, if these metrics were tracked/exposed in CF, then perhaps an additional feature could be to offer warnings for when these limits are being reached, and perhaps even take action (restarting a hung connector) or better yet, make recommendations as to better values that should be chosen.

----------------------------- Additional Watson Details -----------------------------

Watson Bug ID:	3783364

External Customer Info:
External Company:  
External Customer Name: carehart
External Customer Email:  
External Test Config: Not unique to any one configuration

Attachments:

Comments:

One of the most difficult tasks dealing with ColdFusion is tuning the JVM. For me personally, it's like having to understand an entirely different language. Providing this insight should help your customers a lot when the need to tune these settings comes into play.
Vote by External U.
11761 | June 30, 2014 10:21:25 AM GMT
Having a better understanding of the metrics of the connection pool would greatly simplify diagnosing those problems instead of fumbling around and trying unrelated tweaks to try and compensate for the lack of transparency here.
Vote by External U.
11762 | July 07, 2014 04:41:08 PM GMT
Interesting!
Comment by Vamseekrishna N.
11759 | July 08, 2014 09:18:32 PM GMT
As has been highlighted here, the importance of having these settings correct impact alot of the overall performance of the application, so it's too important not the make these settings more visible to the admins of ColdFusion, therefore I add my vote to this.
Vote by External U.
11763 | July 10, 2014 06:49:23 AM GMT
Tracking down these numbers in order to properly tune the connector settings is difficult. Working with CF is supposed to be a streamlined process. Please provide this information (on CF Standard as well) so that developers can quickly tune their apps and get back to coding.
Vote by External U.
11764 | July 21, 2014 01:03:45 PM GMT
+1 to everything that has been said in the description and comments. This would be very helpful. Thanks!, -Aaron
Vote by External U.
11765 | July 22, 2014 01:15:25 AM GMT
I would propose using the existing perfmon interface for exposing these (and other) stats. That makes it possible to use standard Windows monitoring and alerting tools to manage CF servers, which is a big PLUS from an operational aspect.
Vote by External U.
11766 | July 22, 2014 12:34:59 PM GMT
These are essential to have. I have to maintain a large number of servers and many require tuning the connectors. The wsconfig tool just has not kept up with the needs of building, tuning and rebuilding the connectors.
Vote by External U.
11767 | October 13, 2014 05:43:27 PM GMT
Agree this is necessary. Have not implemented any advanced connector features or tuning due to the fact they will be lost with a connector reconfigure, which is usually recommended with most hotfix updates. Would like this in CF 10+.
Vote by External U.
11768 | October 13, 2014 06:49:04 PM GMT
This feature isn't a nice to have - it's critical for any significant ColdFusion server installation. The webserver config tool should only be used for initial setup, and subsequent tuning should be done in CF Administrator. Application of hotfixes, or new versions should preserve settings made in the administrator. I'd go further than Charlie on this. ColdFusion should never be allowed to freeze because of a resource allocation problem. ColdFusion should be monitoring the metrics and make adjustments automatically. A properly designed expert program could do this far more accurately and efficiently than a person. Keep system support staff informed, and even have the capability to manually tweak if they want to. But that should be a option, not a requirement. As I stated in Charlie's other request, ColdFusion is not production ready in its present state.
Vote by External U.
11769 | October 14, 2014 04:26:02 PM GMT
Not using better default settings are making the product look bad. It should not be this difficult to tune the connector.
Vote by External U.
11770 | November 05, 2014 11:17:27 PM GMT
Critical to have as part of CF11 install. I've searched for hours before finding this and had thousands of errors before I changed these files.
Vote by External U.
11771 | December 01, 2014 12:35:54 PM GMT
Vote must be between 25 and 4000 characters
Vote by External U.
11772 | December 11, 2014 11:18:09 AM GMT
+1, this would really help out when setting up the connections and where to set each configuration setting.
Comment by External U.
11760 | January 06, 2015 10:21:45 AM GMT
Anit's comments on this blog post: http://blogs.coldfusion.com/post.cfm/how-we-solved-a-connector-issue-after-coldfusion-11-update-1#comment-7F17653C-F27C-B12A-F2037B083061256A says that the squeaky wheel gets the grease so here is my vote to fix! Thanks Charlie for being a great drum major here. +1
Vote by External U.
11773 | February 01, 2015 11:01:30 PM GMT
Yes, this would be a totally great feature and a time saver :)
Vote by External U.
11774 | March 26, 2015 10:56:08 AM GMT
This is a very necessary improvement. Thanks.
Vote by External U.
11775 | April 29, 2015 12:31:56 PM GMT
Shed some light on the inner workings of ColdFusion
Vote by External U.
11776 | June 03, 2015 07:52:21 AM GMT
This is an essential. I have serious stability issues with a CF installation and even if the connector *isn't* the issue, I have no way of eliminating it without any form of monitoring available.
Vote by External U.
11777 | October 22, 2015 06:24:26 AM GMT
Hi Charlie, We have added the capability of monitoring the connection pool information in CF 2018 with Performance Monitoring Toolset. For previous versions one can configure status worker to see the utilization of workers in the pool. You have also written a detailed blog on the same. [https://www.carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2015/8/3/more_on_tomcat_status_worker]    
Comment by Mayur J.
31328 | September 13, 2019 07:29:59 AM GMT
Thanks, Mayur. Of course, I wrote that post in Aug 2015, and this feature request in June 2014. Even so, the status worker ended up not really being that helpful, in terms of TUNING the connector. And indeed, even the monitor in the CF2018 PMT also has not proven as effective as some may hope. And the connector auto-tuning (another option in the PMT) is not perfect, as it only tunes the web server (IIS/Apache) side of the equation (changing dynamically what would be set in the workers.properties file) but NOT the max threads in the server.xml on the CF side. But if you would contend that either of my assertions are wrong or incomplete, do please let us know if there is a resource that does make things more clear. And of course, for those on CF2016 or earlier, the PMT doesn't help, so they are still left at the mercy of interpreting the info in the 2014 blog post, https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2014/05/coldfusion-11-iis-connector-tuning/, with respect to all the properties that I mentioned in my original post here.
Comment by Charlie A.
31329 | September 13, 2019 02:19:15 PM GMT