Sharing Apache Tomcat and Apache Web Server

Today's problem is sharing one single virtual host with different Tomcat instances. For example, say you have your Apache (the web server) with a virtual host for intranet and you have in different Tomcat instances different applications like: monitoring, dashboard and hradmin. You want your users to be directed to the correct application if they access the URL http://intranet/dashboard or http://intranet/hradmin.

In this example I'm using three Tomcat servers and this applications:

• server1:8080/monitoring/
• server1:8080/dashboard/
• hr1:8080/hradmin/
• hr2:8080/hradmin/

The server1 Tomcat is running two different applications and the hr1 and hr2 are running the hradmin application which we want to be load balanced and since it's critical, to be always available.

The first thing to do is create the jkworkers.properties file:

# This names are the ones defined bellow
worker.list=server1,hrlb
worker.lock=P
worker.status.type=status

# Single server running monitoring and dashboard
worker.server1.type=ajp13
worker.server1.host=192.168.1.2
worker.server1.port=8080
worker.server1.disabled=false
worker.server1.socket_timeout=60000
worker.server1.connect_timeout=60000

# Two workers for two servers running a critical application
worker.hr1.type=ajp13
worker.hr1.host=192.168.1.3
worker.hr1.port=8080
worker.hr1.disabled=false
worker.hr1.socket_timeout=60000
worker.hr1.connect_timeout=60000

worker.hr2.type=ajp13
worker.hr2.host=192.168.1.4
worker.hr2.port=8080
worker.hr2.disabled=false
worker.hr2.socket_timeout=60000
worker.hr2.connect_timeout=60000

# Loadbalancer configuration for the critical application
worker.hrlb.type=lb
worker.hrlb.balance_workers=hr1,hr2
worker.hrlb.sticky_session=true
worker.hrlb.sticky_session_force=false
worker.hrlb.method=R

Of course, you should use the DNS names instead of the IP addresses. Also, there are many more options to be set here, but this should give you a good start.

Second, you need your jk.conf file:

JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/conf.d/jkworkers.properties
JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log
JkLogLevel info
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y]"
JkOptions +ForwardKeySize +ForwardURICompatUnparsed -ForwardDirectories
JkRequestLogFormat "%w %V %T"
JkShmFile /var/log/httpd/jk.shm
<Location /jkstatus>
    JkMount status
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Location>

And finally, you can set up your virtual host in the, for example, intranet.conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName intranet
  RewriteEngine on

  # Here we set where we want the url http://intranet/ to go
  RedirectMatch ^/$ /dashboard/

  DocumentRoot /srv/www/htdocs/docroot
  CustomLog  /var/log/apache2/access_reports combined
  ErrorLog  /var/log/apache2/error_reports
  
  # You can even setup a jongo proxy
  ProxyPass /jongo/ http://192.168.1.5:8080/jongo/
  ProxyPassReverse /jongo/ http://192.168.1.5:8080/jongo/
  
  # It's important that this names are the same used in your Tomcat
  JkMount /dashboard/* server1
  JkMount /monitoring/* server1
  JkMount /hradmin/* hrlb
</VirtualHost>

What we're doing here is telling the Apache server to listen on port 80 for all requests to the intranet host and to forward this requests to their corresponding applications:

• http://intranet/ goes to http://server1/dashboard/
• http://intranet/dashboard/ goes to http://server1/dashboard/
• http://intranet/monitoring/ goes to http://server1/monitoring/
• http://intranet/hradmin/ goes to http://hr1/hradmin/ or to http://hr2/hradmin/

Where you put this files depends on your httpd.conf configuration.

This example will allow a vanilla Apache to serve three different applications (one load balanced) from three Tomcat servers (server1, hr1 and hr2)