Container: Liferay

[akakunin]

Hi! I'm a little bit suprised
Just managed to run clean liferay in CloudFoundry environment, but, during a little bit more experimenting I've found - then new Deployment is created - it is possible to select "Liferay" container.

What it is? Does AMI used to run instances already has liferay preinstalled? If so - what version? If I'm using Liferay as container - what should be contained as war-file? Portlets to be deployed into what liferay? How Liferay is configured to use DB?

So, for me - what options (Container: Liferay) looks very interesting - can I found somethere a little bit more info about it?

[ceracm]

Alexey,

We are running liferay-portal-5.2.2 and it is installed into the AMI when the deployment is launched.

In the application that you deploy:
* The war files should be your portlets.
* The database schema/id/password must be lportal/lportal/lportal

Liferay is configured to access the database through the dbmaster hostname.

Chris

[akakunin]

Chris, thank you for information! it looks really great - CloudFoundry get one more great advantage!

Just to clarify - is Liferay configured to correctly work in Clustered environment (I mean for cases then Multiple Instances topology is used) - ehcache & JackRabbit configuration according to Liferay documentation: http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/com...ain/Clustering

[dvolk]

Alexey,

We do not configure Liferay for clustering at this moment, but we are considering supporting this configuration in the future.

Dmitriy

[akakunin]

Hi Again!

Having liferay as container really great idea!
I played a little bit more with Liferay container, and, unfortunately, found it not so usable for production. Major issues/problems (I hope they will be fixed then application go into production stage):
1. Then application create (to deploy into liferay) - it is still asked for DB Configuration. Is these settings (db name, username/password) used later by liferay server itself to connect to DB? Or it is used some own connection configuration? The thing is - in liferay - not a portlet (application in our case) responsible for DB connection - but liferay (connector in our case) itself - portlet in most cases just reused that connection
2. To deploy portlet into liferay - it is not the same as deploy war into it's container (tomcat6 in our case). Then we deploy portlet into liferay via (for example) Liferay's Control Panel - Liferay did some modufications (like added required tlds or libs into that war). As result - it is not possible to just put portlet war into application (to run later in liferay container) - user need to do such modifications by hand.
3. Liferay container has default liferay distribution - with some extra staff like WOL portlet or 7Cog hook portlet. As result, liferay started with demo organization created - and, it is very hard to remove it (to use liferay in production with own data) via liferay's control panel. I think it is better to do not include them - since they used mostly for demo - and not usable in production liferay installation
4. As we already discussed - required configuration to run Liferay in clustered environment is missed - as result, it is almost inpossible to use it in multi-instance environment

Anyway - great job guys - I'm looking forward for your progress with big interest!

[kito99]

Alexy,

We're currently using Liferay on CloudFoundry. Comments below.

> 1. Then application create (to deploy into liferay) - it is still asked for DB Configuration. Is these settings (db name, username/password) used later by liferay server itself to connect to DB? Or it is used some own connection configuration? The thing is - in liferay - not a portlet (application in our case) responsible for DB connection - but liferay (connector in our case) itself - portlet in most cases just reused that connection

The DB settings are for Liferay itself (lportal /lportal). Right now CloudFoundry isn't setup to deploy portlets. The WAR that you deploy for a new Liferay instance is really just a dummy WAR.

> 2. To deploy portlet into liferay - it is not the same as deploy war into it's container (tomcat6 in our case). Then we deploy portlet into liferay via (for example) Liferay's Control Panel - Liferay did some modufications (like added required tlds or libs into that war). As result - it is not possible to just put portlet war into application (to run later in liferay container) - user need to do such modifications by hand.

You're right.

>3. Liferay container has default liferay distribution - with some extra staff like WOL portlet or 7Cog hook portlet. As result, liferay started with demo organization created - and, it is very hard to remove it (to use liferay in production with own data) via liferay's control panel. I think it is better to do not include them - since they used mostly for demo - and not usable in production liferay installation

That's a good question. After all, that is the default installation, and 7Cog is useful for new users. It's not that hard to remove.

> 4. As we already discussed - required configuration to run Liferay in clustered environment is missed - as result, it is almost inpossible to use it in multi-instance environment

This could still be done manually, but you're right -- it's not handled by CloudFoundry.

Right now, it's certainly more flexible to install Liferay as a WAR using Spring tc server or Tomcat. Your writeup is an excellent resource for this. I'll be talking to the CloudFoundry folks and the Liferay folks about how to make this easier going forward, because we're planning on using Liferay for a few sites on CloudFoundry.

--
Kito D. Mann -- Author, JavaServer Faces in Action
http://twitter.com/kito99 http://twitter.com/jsfcentral
JSF 2 Seminar Oct 6th: http://www.regonline.com/jsf2seminar
JSF Summit Conference Dec 1st-4th in Orlando: http://www.jsfsummit.com
http://www.JSFCentral.com - JavaServer Faces FAQ, news, and info
+1 203-404-4848 x3

[akakunin]

Thank you for clarifications.

Yes, as well as you, I also found, what even Liferay container is very nice feature - in current implementation it is not usable, and - it is simple deploy war into tomcat or spring tc.

But - then these issues will be fixed - I hope it will be really nice solution for easy organizing liferay "hosting in cloud"