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Apache Tomcat

For each Easit GO instance and custom integration a instance of Apache Tomcat is installed. In a Windows environment Apache Tomcat is installed as a Windows service. When installed by Easit we use the core binary distribution, Easit do NOT use Tomcats service installer. Apache Tomcat, from now on called Tomcat, consists of the following folders:

  • bin
  • conf
  • lib
  • logs
  • temp
  • webapps
  • work

Tomcat is responsible for running a application and making it accessible.

General

When talking Easit GO or a custom integration delivered by Easit the following folders are of interest:

  • bin
  • conf
  • logs
  • webapps

However, for simplicity, we usually keep all the folders in a folder named Tomcat for each application. Exemplified this could look like this in Easit root directory.

  1. EasitRootDirectory
    1. System1
      1. Tomcat
        1. bin
        2. conf
    2. System2
      1. Tomcat
        1. bin
        2. conf

At the end of this introduction you should be able to download Apache Tomcat and start Easit GO with it.

First, let us break down the folders and the purpose for each one.

bin

Startup, shutdown, and other scripts. The .sh files (for Unix systems) are functional duplicates of the *.bat files (for Windows systems). Since the Win32 command-line lacks certain functionality, there are some additional files in here.

conf

Configuration files and related DTDs. The most important file in here is server.xml. It is the main configuration file for the container.

lib

All libraries included by Apache Tomcat, no libraries from Easit lives here.

logs

Log files are here by default.

temp

Used by the JVM for temporary files.

webapps

This is where the actual webapp. Easit build their apps in war files.

work

Contains temporary working directories for the deployed web applications.

Easit GO

To make it easier following the information in this introduction, either logon to the server where your instance of Easit GO is installed or download the binary core package for Tomcat from https://tomcat.apache.org/ and expand it locally.

There are some custom files added to the Tomcat package and some that are customized to better fit to automation. These files are bin/AddTomcatService.bat, conf/context.xml and conf/server.xml.

AddTomcatService.bat

conf/context.xml

In this file we add an extra element. This element tells Easit GO where its configuration files lives.

Element example:

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<Parameter name="BPEContextPrefix" value="[SystemName]" override="false" />

This value corresponds to a key in the registry, located at Computer\HKEY_USERS\[userRunningTomcatService]\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\com\easit\bpe.

conf/server.xml

In this file we configure what port the Tomcat service, and by proxy Easit GO, listens to. For example, if we in server.xml set the connector port to 8080 for protocol HTTP we can connect to Easit GO locally on the server with http://localhost:8080. By default Easit GO is installed with the following settings in server.xml:

  • Server port="8005"
  • Server.Service.Connector.port (Protocol = HTTP) = 8080
  • Server.Service.Connector.port (Protocol = AJP) = 8009

AJP Connector

The AJP Connector, for Easit GO, uses the following attributes:

  • secret

This value need to be added in ISAPI/[SiteNameForSystem]/conf/workers.properties. If you do not want to use a secret, you can specify secretRequired=false instead.

More information about AJP from Apache
More information about ISAPI and IIS with Easit GO

Older installations

In some older installs of Easit GO a different directory structure where used. That structure should look something like this:

  • C:\Easit\ or /opt/Easit/
  • Systems
    • System1
    • Application
      • conf
      • logs
      • webapps
  • Tomcat
    • bin
    • lib

Memory and GC

For a normal production installation of Easit GO its recommended that Tomcat is allocated 4 GB of memory as a starting point. Depending on how many users Easit GO has this will vary. The more users the more memory needs to be allocated. Memory allocation can be done in to "stages", initial and maximum. As a best practice for Easit GO these should be set to the same value. To be more specific, the memory we are talking about here is heap memory. How much memory Tomcat can allocate is set by opening (right-click and choose run as administrator) the service GUI (Tomcat/bin/[NameOfService]w.exe) and update Initial memory pool and Maximum memory pool.

With a default installation Easit GO uses GC1 as its garbage collector. If you wish to use a different garbage collector or customize how the garbage collector behaves this can be customized with Java Options parameters in the settings of the Tomcat service.

If the Tomcat service does not have sufficient memory allocated you may experience performance issues in Easit GO.

More information about memory management

More information about Stack Memory and Heap Space

More information about garbage collection

Remove service

If you wish you remove or uninstall a Tomcat service this can be done by executing the following commands in a elevated PowerShell session.

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PS C:\Users\me> cd [Path\To\Tomcat\Bin\Directory]
PS DriveLetter:\Path\To\Tomcat\bin> service.bat remove [NameOfServiceToRemove]

Further reading

Apache Tomcat