Decoupling Live and Editorial Servers

One of the big challenges in building a scalable Content Management System is in separating the live server from the editorial server. Ideally, neither the load nor the complexity of the editorial server affects the performance of the live server; conversely, the traffic on the live server should have minimal impact on the editorial server. This talk will discuss the architecture that CCM CMS uses to achieve this goal. In the CCM CMS, the editorial server makes heavy use of a database and is therefore inherently less scalable than a web server serving only static files. The live server, on the other hand, does not need any access to the database, and is realized entirely as an Apache instance serving static files and a few scripts that only use information available in the file system. The editorial server maintains the live server's file system and keeps it coherent with the content in the database. The talk will concentrate on the architectural implications this design has for the CMS publishing pipeline, the possibilities for a personalized live server and some design tradeoffs for the communication between live and editorial server.

David Lutterkort
Red Hat, Inc.
dlutter@redhat.com