How to find out if Tomcat is 32 bit or 64 bit on window server?

Question

We have an installer which install Tomcat. How do I know if it's 32bit version of Tomcat or 64bit version?

Answer 1

As Pierre mentions there is only one installer available from apache.org that will work on both 32bits and 64bits in the Tomcat official site. This is because Tomcat itself is a java application and it is platform independent (the Java VM is what will be 32bits or 64bits). In any case, it doesn't matter if you have installed Java in the 32bits or 64bits version however depending on the Java version you have installed it will install the Windows service wrapper for 32 or 64 bits.

In a 32 bits system you can only install the 32 bits Java version. On a 64 bits system you can install either a Java 32 bits version or a Java 64 bits version. If you installed a 64 bits version the default installation directory for the Tomcat will be installed as a 64 bits application. This mean that installer will use the "Program Files" folder as the default installation directory and the entry for the Tomcat service in the windows registry will be placed in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apache Software Foundation". However if you use a 32 bits version of Java Tomcat will be installed as a 32 bits application. The default installation directory for the installer will be in "Program Files (x86)" and the entry for the service in the windows registry will be placed in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432\Apache Software Foundation". This is the default for 32 bits applications in a 64 bits Windows system.

Together with the Windows service wrapper there is another component that it is different for a 32bits and 64bits version of Tomcat. It is the APR/native library for Windows but this is not included in the installer. In the Tomcat website you can also find other Tomcat distributions that include it and these distributions do depend on the JVM version that you are using (32 or 64 bits ).