Apache Tomcat Administration Training Course

Tomcat Overview 

• Brief introduction to Apache
• The Apache Software Foundation
• The Jakarta Project
• Tomcat Licensing
• J2EE Technologies
• Java Web Development
• Servlet and JSP Containers

Java Web Applications

• Introduction to Servlets
• Servlet Benefits & Lifecycle
• JavaServer Pages
• JSP, JavaBeans, and JSP Tag Libraries
• MVC frameworks

Installing Tomcat

• Downloading and installing Apache Tomcat
• Acquire and install a JVM, Tomcat, and Ant
• Windows installer
• Java memory management and JVM tuning for performance

Tomcat Directories

• Tomcat installation directories, directory structure, bin directory, and common/shared directories
• Conf directory, logs directory, server directory, work directory, temp directory, and webapps directory
• Web application directory structure
• Deploying HTML and JSP pages and web contexts
• JSP pages and generated code
• Deploying a web app

Configuring Tomcat

• Tomcat configuration and relevant techniques
• Tomcat's component architecture
• <Server>, <Service>, <Connector>, <Engine>, <Host>, <Context>, <Realm>, <Valve>, <Listener>, <Loader>, and <Manager> elements
• The Server.xml file
• Modifying server.xml

Web Applications

• Web application administration & deployment
• Directory structure of a web app
• The web.xml configuration file
• Deployment descriptors
• The <web-app></web-app> element
• Mapping a servlet to a URL
• The <resource-ref></resource-ref> element
• The <env-entry></env-entry> element
• The <ejb-ref></ejb-ref> element
• Sample web.xml file
• Deploying a web application
• Tomcat's default conf/web.xml file
• Tuning default JSP and static content servlets

Tomcat Manager

• Deploying and managing web applications via the Tomcat Manager
• Starting the Tomcat Manager and interface overview
• Examining the Manager section
• Applications, deploy, and server information
• Creating a WAR file
• Lab 4: Deploying a WAR file
• Java Management Extensions (JMX) on Tomcat
• Tomcat integration with Ant

Advanced Features

• Leveraging Tomcat's advanced features
• Valves, access log valve, and single sign-on valve
• Remote address filter and remote host filter
• Request dumper valve
• Configuring JNDI resources
• JNDI: Java Naming and Directory Interface, and defining a JNDI resource
• The <environment></environment> element and the <resource></resource> element
• Configuring a JavaMail session
• Global resources

JDBC Connectivity

• Configuring Tomcat to connect to a database
• Overview of JDBC
• JDBC drivers
• Database connections and connection pools
• Download and install MySQL
• Configure MySQL for Tomcat
• Create a database in MySQL
• Download and deploy a JDBC driver
• Defining a data source in Tomcat and manually defining a data source
• Modifying the deployment descriptor
• Detecting and closing leaked database connections

Tomcat Security

• Security on Tomcat and configuration
• Security considerations
• File system security and filesystem recommendations
• Java security manager
• Granting permissions to Java apps and reviewing Java permissions
• Creating and adding custom policies
• Enabling the Java security manager
• Security manager tips and security realms
• Exploring different types of realms and configuring a realm
• Users and roles (authentication and authorization)
• Creating a data source realm
• Password protection
• FORM-based authentication
• Configuring Tomcat for SSL
• Requiring SSL in applications

Connecting

• Connecting Tomcat to Apache
• Examining connectors
• HTTP connectors
• Advantages of using a web server
• Connector protocols
• Configuring an AJP connector
• Download mod_jk
• Create the mod_jk.conf file
• Start Tomcat
• Create a worker
• Configure httpd.conf
• Test the setup
• Load balancing applications across multiple Tomcat instances
• Issues with load balancing
• Server affinity via sticky sessions
• Shared session storage
• Replicated sessions via Tomcat clustering
• Shared hosting
• Tomcat virtual hosting
• Configuring Tomcat to enable virtual hosting as a stand-alone server
• Configuring Tomcat to enable virtual hosting using jk2 or webapp.
• Configuring Tomcat as stand-alone
• Configuring Tomcat with AJP
• Separate JVM for each host

Load Testing

• JMeter application
• Load testing with JMeter
• Install and run JMeter
• Creating a test plan
• Configure the thread group and add a task
• Configure the HTTP request
• Add a report listener
• Run the test plan
• Viewing the results