Posted by: admin
on Sep 21, 2009
This is a comparison between a CMS architecture using a fully distributed CMS like Jentla and a symlinked CMS. There are lower risks in the use of a distributed CMS hosting arrangement mostly due to the ability to spread the load across multiple servers. The only real advantage of a symlinked system is the space saving on files but with A Joomla sites able to be cut down to 30Mb before content is added and disk space being so cheap this is no longer so important.
We hear of systems administrators running large clusters of Joomla sites via symlinked systems and talking about the advantages but when you get into the details of how restrictive it is to make changes, it's no wonder that they find it very difficult to keep up with Joomla versions. At best, they can keep up by enforcing a draconian level of commonality amongst sites. Sites with a variety of differing extensions span the requirement for a array of config file changes and become incredibly hard to support via symlinking.u9q5ycdtva
| Requirements | Distributed CMS | Symlinked CMS |
| Server load | Very good A fully distributed CMS environment with each site using its own database and filesystem is truly scalable. | Very poor Extreme load on single target file system. |
| Redundancy | Very Good | Very poor Extreme dependence on one filesystem |
| Scalability | Extremely Good Sites can be spread across multiple servers | Poor Only to server capacity |
| Supportability | Very good Extensions and Sites can be managed individually or groups. | Poor Configuration files must be manually reviewed and separated form symlinked files requiring very detailed testing. Very dependent on key staff. |
| Usability | Very good All sites can be managed via a centralized control panel. | Very low Requires highly specialized expertise. |
| Key person dependency | Very Good True multisite CMS systems like Jentla have greatly reduced staff support commitments. | Very poor Highly dependent on key staff using undocumented customized solution. |
| Site Security | Very Good Only sites that are hacked have problems, there is no single point of failure | Very poor Every site is hacked when symlinked files are hacked |
| Filesystem space | Poor Each site has it’s own filesystem adding an additional 30Mb per site. | Very Good |