And I wanted to offer some additional thoughts--first planning to offer them as a comment--because there's a lot behind the question and his observations. But as it got longer, I realized it was too long for a comment. Also, I didn't want people to think (in reading a comment on Ben's blog) that I was challenging Ben or questioning his understanding of the matter! Not at all. :-) Instead, I was just wanting to add more context, to help other readers, and based on my years of observing the community.

What I offer here is pretty much exactly what I wrote, but I have added headings, to help readers here:

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This question, "How can I keep CF Admin settings in sync between multiple servers or instances?" was asked today on the Adobe CF forums. The person had CF instances on multiple servers and lamented having to login to each CF admin to make changes that would apply equally to all instances, in particular creating or changing datasources.

They wondered if in fact there was a feature in the CF Admin to "cluster" datasource definitions, like there is (since CF2016 Enterprise) the feature to "cluster" scheduled tasks.

While I explained that there was not such a "feature" to sync CF admin settings generally across instances, I added that there WERE at least a couple of options one could consider using to achieve the goal. (And as an update after I wrote this in Apr 2020, note that CF2021 came out a few months later offering still one more.) My answer elaborating things (as is my wont) was long enough that I should have probably created a blog post instead. After submitting it, I decided to do just that, here (and I have tweaked here what I said, with some more elaboration and links).

Short answer: there are different tools that might be considered to help with this task (especially automating it), and a couple more that some may consider:

• the CFConfig tool within CommandBox, a powerful and automatable command line tool which uses json files and could allow you to sync things, even across CF versions and between CF and Lucee
• the CF2021 cfsetup tool, a new command line tool which also uses json files and could allow you to sync things, for CF2021 and even earlier version
• the CF Admin API (minimalist and manual), which you'd have to code to sync settings or set them in a synced manner
• the CF CAR file feature deserves a mention also, though its use can't be automated (it seems)
• I would advise AGAINST the seeming "shortcut" of copying neo xml files, especially between different servers or CF versions (same with using symlinks, etc.)

For more on all this, read on.

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To be clear, I do not mean with this warning to suggest that you should NOT apply the update! It implements an important security fix.

Instead, it's that after applying it, your CF web sites served via IIS or Apache WILL likely break initially, until you take one at least and perhaps two extra steps. The good news is that these steps are both easy and documented by Adobe in the update technotes, but they do require that someone do them, if needed. Let me explain.

[Update: I did an abbreviated version of this post on the Adobe CF portal: Three reasons your sites may break, and how to fix them, after applying March 2020 update to CF2018 or 2016. Note I also titled it differently. Just trying many ways to get people's attention. That post may interest some, either to read first (but my TLDR below also tries to abbreviate things also), or especially if you may prefer to give others a link to a post on this matter that is not as "dense" as this one. :-) I do point to this post from there, of course, for the many additional details that some may appreciate.]

Sadly, because many people don't bother to read the CF update technotes (linked to below), and they just apply the CF updates, they are not noticing this issue until they or their users start screaming because their sites are down. There's also a fair bit of "screaming" in the CF community, and folks responding may not know the info that I (or Adobe) have shared, to get things "working again", so I hope this helps bring some calm, and most important the clear solution/s needed.

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Perhaps you're getting errors referring to "metaspace" or "OutOfMemoryError: Metaspace", whether in your web sites, error logs, or even the CF Admin, and you wonder "what to do". Or you may be getting odd occurrences of blank pages, and if you look in your coldfusion-error.log you are finding such metaspace errors.

TLDR; In all these cases, the solution is simple (and may seem contrarian to some ears): REMOVE the maxmetaspace element from your JVM arguments. Indeed, I would go so far as to say everyone should simply remove it, even BEFORE you may get errors.

In the post that follows, I will explain how to remove it, including how you need to be VERY careful when doing that. You may also wonder why I recommend removing it, versus raising it. I cover that, as well as that bug report, below.

Update: I also created an abbreviated version of this post, on the Adobe CF portal, if that may interest some readers.

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And what can you do about it, if you are on CF2016 or 11, and you want to use /api for your URLs? There are are two choices, depending on your needs: in brief, you can either:

• change your /api folder to a new name (which I realize may not appeal to all to some)
• or change the CF configuration, to STOP it treating /api specially for the API Manager's use. You would do this by editing two CF config files, urlworkermap.properties and web.xml (but this will break the ability of the API Manager to introspect REST services in CF2016 or CF11, though not CF2018)

TLDR; if you're bold and a risk taker, you can jump to the bottom to see my list of changes to make for that second option. As is often the case, there is risk in making changes in a cavalier fashion. There are various things to consider, and I warn of them below--but the good news is that this is a change that may take only minutes to do, once you've been careful to read about how to do it effectively.

Read on for more, including pros and cons of each choice, what to change and where, why this problem NO LONGER happens from CF2018 onward, and more.

(And if you are not familiar with the CF Enterprise API Manager, which is installed separately from CF, you can read about it here.)

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For some, that's all they need to know. For most, they will probably want to read on.

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Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Update: (The sessions were recorded and I've modified this post to offer links to the recordings instead of the registration pages.)

These all-new ones will focus on Troubleshooting with FusionReactor and are geared toward helping folks new to FR--or perhaps experienced but a bit bemused by its many features--to better understand how to use it to troubleshoot problems in your app server (CF, Lucee, or any Java server).

The parts in the new series (with links here to view the recordings) will be:

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Note: This blog post is from 2018. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

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Note: This blog post is from 2017. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

The first problem was introduced in the CF2016 installer released in Dec 2016, and any after that, where Adobe has literally removed the library used for the calendaring, but you can add it back, as I discuss below. (If you install or installed CF 2016 from the original installer in Feb 2016, you won't see this problem as it wasn't removed then.)

The second problem was introduced in those two named updates, and was fixed in the very next updates (CF11 update 13 or CF2016 update 5). And of course, this could also happen if you're moving to CF11 or 2016 for the first time, and someone else had "fully updated" those to that update level before you started testing against it.

If you'd like to know more, read on.

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