I can't answer for others - but one of the big values in a 'production' environment is to separate concerns. The apache servers can sit in a different DMZ area, and have only static (and unprotected) content on them. The tomcat servers have another firewall between them and the apache servers - and they host the webapps, and have access to protected content (which is controlled via servlets). In addition, the apache servers have no access to the databases, so an attacker would have to break through both the apache and the tomcat defenses in order to gain access to the database content.
In addition to more granular security (as described above), having isolated the web layer from the application layer allows you to independently adjust the performance of each. If you are finding that your system serves a lot more static content than it does 'application' functionality, you may need several web servers to handle the load. Likewise, if your system is application focused, you may need more tomcat servers (probably clustered) than web servers. All that being said, it's really a matter of the needs for your particular deployment. If you have no serious security concerns, and you don't need to isolate the web load from the application server load - a single server running tomcat is perfectly acceptable. -- Robin D. Wilson Director of Web Development KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. WORK: 512-623-5913 CELL: 512-426-3929 www.KingsIsle.com -----Original Message----- From: Elmar Haneke [mailto:el...@haneke.de] Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 11:27 AM To: Tomcat Users List Subject: Re: Why we need two servers (httpd and tomcat) > And why do we need these two servers in the first place. Running tomcat in stand-alone-mode might be sufficient for an website not depending on modules available in httpd only (as PHP, mod_rewrite or server-side-includes). Elmar --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
