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Publishing to server clusters

SDL Tridion Sites has an advanced publishing option to use when publishing to a cluster of machines that should be considered as one. If publishing to one machine fails, publishing on all machines can be rolled back in every phase except the post-transaction phase.

A user who submits one or more items for publishing or unpublishing can select the option Abort publishing/unpublish on all servers in case of error. This option is located in the Advanced tab of the Publish or Unpublish dialog.

Selecting this option indicates that all machines in a Publication Targets should be considered as a cluster; that is, if publishing to one (or more) of these machines fails, publishing to all of them is rolled back and the entire publish action to that Publication Target will be considered as having failed.

However, for this functionality to work, you also need to edit your Transport Service configuration file, cd_transport_conf.xml. In the Senders element, ensure the presence of an attribute called TransactionalMode, set to the value transport.

On the Content Delivery side, publishing can be divided into the following publish phases:

  • pre-processing
  • processing
  • post-processing
  • pre-transaction
  • post-transaction

The rollback initiated by a failing publish action to another machine can be performed all the way up to and including the pre-transaction phase. Only if a publish action reaches the post-transaction phase can the rollback no longer be made.

This restriction applies both to a standard publish action and to a publish action that uses custom Content Deployer extensions (Processors and/or Modules).