Tomcat multiple instances simultaneously

Question

I am trying to run multiple instances of Tomcat, but even after configuring different ports for listening and shutting down the second instance, it keeps trying to listen on 8080 (configured for 8081). I read that I have to set a different value for CATALINA_BASE. From all the articles there are online, none of them actually show in which file this variable can be set.

Where and how can I set CATALINA_BASE for my Tomcat instance in C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.39

Answer 1

Let's say that you have only one Tomcat folder located in C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.39, and that you wish to run two instances from it.

Make sure that you have CATALINA_HOME system/user variable set, and pointing to C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.39

1. Create a folder C:\instance1. Copy conf, webapps and temp folders from C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.39 and paste them to C:\instance1. You can delete contents from webapps and temp folders located under instance1, but don't touch conf contents.

2. Now copy>paste C:\instance1 and rename it to instance2. That way, both instance1 and instance2 will have the same content.

3. Go to C:\instance2\conf, edit server.xml and change the numbers of these ports (I marked those as XXXX):

   <Server port="XXXX" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">

   <Connector port="XXXX" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" />

   <Connector port="XXXX" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" />

4. Deploy whatever you want into instance1\webapps and instance2\webapps

5. Create the following 4 batch files under C:\

instance1_startup.bat

@echo off

set CATALINA_BASE=C:\instance1

cd "%CATALINA_HOME%\bin"

set TITLE=My Tomcat Instance 01

call startup.bat %TITLE%

instance1_shutdown.bat

@echo off

set CATALINA_BASE=C:\instance1

cd "%CATALINA_HOME%\bin"

call shutdown.bat

instance2_startup.bat

@echo off

set CATALINA_BASE=C:\instance2

cd "%CATALINA_HOME%\bin"

set TITLE=My Tomcat Instance 02

call startup.bat %TITLE%

instance2_shutdown.bat

@echo off

set CATALINA_BASE=C:\instance2

cd "%CATALINA_HOME%\bin"

call shutdown.bat

1. Run instance1_startup.bat and instance2_startup.bat, hopefully it should work.

Answer 2

The easiest way I have run two copies of Tomcat involved the following steps (I was trying to run two distinct versions of tomcat, 6 and 7):

• Establish 2 copies of tomcat in different folders (if they are different versions then this is easy, if they are the same version then you will need be distinguished in some other way. There are a lot of files that Tomcat creates to manage it so running two instances with the same work directory likely isn't possible)

• Change the following ports that tomcat is listening to in server.xml

  • <Connector port="8080"> <- This is the port that tomcat uses to respond to HTTP requests
  • <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> <- this defines two ports, one for the AJP connector (used if you are using tomcat behind an Apache or IIS server) and the port used for HTTPS traffic
  • <Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN"> <- this is the port that Tomcat uses to respond to SHUTDOWN events

Finally, if you are running this as a Windows service you will need to establish different service names for each instance (you can do this during setup, the default for Tomcat 7 is tomcat7). Once Tomcat is running all of it's configuration fields use relative paths so you don't need to touch CATALINA_BASE