Second Instance of Tomcat

Question

I am getting ready to deploy the Second Instance of Tomcat on the same server using different IP addresses.

TomcatInstance1 (IP Address: xx.xx.xx.x1)
TomcatInstance2 (IP Address: xx.xx.xx.x2)

I have a few question, see below:

1) For the Tomcat server ports, I will be using the Connector Port and Redirect port to bind it to a specific IP address by using "address="xx.xx.xx.xx"". Is there a way to use the same Shutdown Port and AJP Port to bind it to a different IP address? Or do I have to change the Shutdown and AJP port number.

2) Keystore:
a. I am going to be using https, can I use the same .keystore to import the certificate?
b. If I move the .keystore to another location outside of Tomcat home, will Tomcat be able to see the .keystore if I specify the path within the server.xml file for .keystore path?
c. Should I create a new .keystore for the new instance?
d. What is the best practice for this?

3) Does anyone know a way to encrypt the clear-text passwords specified in tom-user.xml for the Tomcat manager and server.xml file for .keystore?

Answer 1

1) The shutdown address can be specified in Tomcat 7, not in Tomcat 6.

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/server.html

All of the AJP connectors (Tomcat 6 & 7) support an "address" attribute. See here.

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/ajp.html#Standard_Implementations

2 a) Not exactly sure I follow you here. Are you asking if you can configure the connector for both instances of Tomcat to point to the same keystore file? As far as I know, that's OK.

2 b) Yes. See keystoreFile.

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/http.html#SSL_Support

2 c) That's up to you. Do whatever makes the most sense for your setup.

2 d) It's tough to say what is a "best practice", since most environments are different and what makes the most sense for you likely depends on your unique environment.

What I can say is that I often see SSL terminated in front of Tomcat with a dedicated hardware device or Apache HTTPD. It performs well, plus it makes sense in setups with multiple Tomcat instances because there is already something in front of the Tomcat instances to load balance across them.

That doesn't mean you have to do that though. You could terminate the SSL with Tomcat and people do. If you go this route, I'd suggest using the APR or NIO connector though. The APR connector performs the best with SSL, but is a little trickier to setup. The NIO doesn't perform as good as the APR, but I believe it's better than the BIO connector and it's easy to setup.

3) I don't know of anything for the tomcat-users.xml file. It's my understanding that this file is not recommended for production use, so you should probably look at using a JDBC or LDAP realm instead.

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/realm.html

Another option would be to write a custom realm that decrypts the passwords.

Having said that, I believe the general suggestion here is to apply proper unix permissions on the files to control access to them. For example, you should set the owner to be the user that is running Tomcat, which should *not* be root and set the permission to r/w only for the owner.

Answer 2

The combination of IPAddr:port needs to be unique, so you can use the same port numbers if they're on different IP addresses, or the same IP addresses if the instances are listening on different ports.

Can't help you with the keystore stuff.