Why do we put something in front of tomcat? Do we need it? I’ll quote the apache docs.

When using a single server, the performance when using a native webserver in front of the Tomcat instance is most of the time significantly worse than a standalone Tomcat with its default HTTP connector, even if a large part of the web application is made of static files.

Of course, this changes when we need a load balancer….or do we?

Tomcat 5 provides load balancing in three different ways: using the JK native connector, using Apache 2 with mod_proxy and mod_rewrite, or using the balancer web app.

The balancer web app is for tomcat native load balancing and provides useful features such as cluster wide sessions that the apache solutions (and hardware based ones) do not.

Below are some links on using tomcat native clustering.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/03/31/clustering.html

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/04/14/clustering.html

And of course:

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/cluster-howto.html

Note: I imported this from a pot I wrote 20 years ago! Does anyone use Java anymore? I haven’t since 2016. But I like the thought.