Locking across a cluster in ColdFusion

When implementing high traffic websites in ColdFusion MX, it is often required that a website is hosted in a clustered, load balanced environment which can lead to many challenges in itself.

One such challenge is maintaining control of possible race conditions that could corrupt data if they were allowed to occur. The cflock tag is constrained by the machine it is running on and cannot cause a lock to be enforced across a group of machines in order to maintain a critical section. Even if the load balancing is achieved through the use of sticky sessions, there are still issues around race conditions where the accuracy of data across all of the web servers is critical.

CF_ClusterLock is a simple native ColdFusion custom tag that provides the capability to lock functions across any number of servers thereby providing control over critical sections of code in high traffic, load balanced clustered environments.

CF_ClusterLock is available for download and requires a database that is visible by all web servers in order that it can perform its function correctly.