Topic: Apache & Tomcat

[Xenobius]

Hi all, I am new here and I would like to thank you for your time reading my query.

Problem: I host my online shop with a private hosting company and it is becoming expensive. Now I decided to host everything on my personal server. I have 2 websites.

I was told that if my shop contains lots of images and other static content, it would make sense to use Apache and integrate it with Tomcat and so I did using this guide. http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/howto/ApachePlusTomcat_HowTo.html

Questions:
1. Apache is running on port 80 while Tomcat is running port 8080. Should Apache be the one accepting requests? (only port 80 will be accessible from outside)

2. I put a simple jsp file in Tomcat and accessed it from Apache and it worked. Is this the way to go? If so how will Apache know when to send out static content? I mean I intend to have lots of images... if they are in Tomcat, how will Apache serve them quickly?

3. If I have 2 websites with the aim of hosting them on a single IP, where should I do this configuration? Apache, Tomcat or both?

I would be very grateful if you could remove all these doubts so that I can continue searching and learning the right way.

Thanks
X

[James Blond]

[Xenobius]

Thanks for your reply. Could you kindly:

2. Explain how please?

Oh and I managed to use VHosts in apache and in Tomcat and I managed to get through to 2 websites from one IP.

Thanks a lot
X

[James Blond]

As it is for httpd apache you can use name based vhosts see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/vhosts/name-based.html There are also tons of vhost (virtual hosts) configurations in the forum.

In the name based vhost of apache you can run a reverse proxy to each vhost of your tomcat.

Here is an example vhost how I connect via ajp to my jenkins server https://mariobrandt.de/archives/apache/apache-ajp-reverse-proxy-322/

For the name based vhost for tomcat you have to google a bit, cause I have no experience with that so far.