I’m used to using hardware to load balance multiple servers all running my ColdBox site. So, if www.mysite.com points to the load balancer, I set up additional policies on the LB so www1.mysite.com, www2.mysite.com and www3.mysite.com, etc all point directly to a specific server behind the LB. Then I can hit them directly for testing or reinitting.
As far as multiple JVM instances, I’m not sure what options you have to target a specific one as it’s been a few years since I’ve played with that. One big question is how you are balancing the load. There are a million different setups, but I assume you have one box with one IIS install locally and using JRun clustering. You may be able to hit an instance directly by hitting the port number for that instance directly like www.mysite.com:8305 or whatever.
If that doesn’t work, I think I’d try something like the interceptor idea others suggested. If you were on Railo, you could use something like the cluster scope to notify other instances to reinit.
Thanks!
~Brad