MULE TCAT SERVERSERVER PROFILES

Shanky Gupta

INTRODUCTION

• Tcat Server supports a feature named server profiles that offers an automated way to apply file changes and environment variable settings changes to one or more Tcat or Tomcat installations, and a central point of administration and storage of these changes.• The main uses for server profiles are explained in next slides.

1. TOMCAT CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT• Centrally manage and deploy a set of Tomcat configuration

changes, including any server configuration files and scripts that need to be stored within the Tomcat installation tree. For example you may want to distribute a server.xml and a catalina.properties file together to several Tomcat installations, and automate applying those changes each time you modify these files.

2. SERVER STARTUP ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS• A consistent, automated, and repeatable mechanism for

centrally setting and applying server environment variable settings, including setting JVM startup switches and system properties in the JAVA_OPTS environment variable.

3. MISCELLANEOUS FILE DEPLOYMENT

• Any files that are not part of a web application, and not part of Tomcat, but must be deployed onto the server may be centrally managed and stored using the Tcat Server console, and deployed into the Tcat or Tomcat installation directory tree using a server profile. For example, if your webapp(s) use a container-managed database connection pool that is built into Tomcat, place the JDBC driver into Tomcat’s lib directory, which is outside of the webapps.

• Tcat Server implements a mechanism to deploy, redeploy, and undeploy web application files to one or more servers, but when you need to distribute consistent Tomcat configuration changes to one or more servers, you may use server profiles. In some cases you may need to separate your webapp context configuration from your webapp files, and in that case you may use a server profile to deploy your configuration changes.• You may use Server profile environment variables to add to the

beginning or end of any value that each server already has. For example, you may apply a server profile that adds an additional configuration file and also adds a system property definition to the end of the server’s JAVA_OPTS environment variable.

HOW TO USE SERVER PROFILES – STEP 1• Here are steps you may follow to create a new server profile and apply it to

your servers:• Step 1: Create a workspace to hold your server profile’s files and

directories:• Click the top-level Repository tab.• Click the Profiles workspace link to navigate into the server profiles workspace.• Click the New Workspace button and type in a workspace name for your server

profile. This name can be any free-form text name, but it should be short and clearly convey the name of the server profile.• Add any files and directories to your server profile by uploading them into your

server profile’s workspace. Files that you place in the root directory of your workspace are written to the root of your Tomcat’s installation (CATALINA_BASE). So, for example, if you wanted to include a JDBC driver jar file so that it is installed into Tomcat’s lib/ directory, create a lib directory in the root of your server profile’s workspace and then upload the JDBC driver jar into the lib directory.

HOW TO USE SERVER PROFILES – STEP 2• Step 2: Create a server profile, give it a name, and select the workspace you

created in Step 1:• Click the top-level Administration tab.• Click the Server Profiles link on the left (under the Manage heading).• Click New. This brings up the new server profile form.• Type in a name for your server profile – this should be a short name that you

want shown in the Tcat console when applying and showing your server profile. Also, type in a description that describes the goal of your server profile, and also important information and notes about its contents, such as the versions of the software it contains, the version(s) of Tomcat it may be applied to, the operating systems it is meant to support, etc.• Select the workspace that contains your server profile’s files and directories.• Click the Save button at the bottom of the form at any time to save your

server profile.

HOW TO USE SERVER PROFILES – STEP 3• Step 3: Set any environment variable values in your server profile.

Not every server profile requires environment variable settings, but if yours does, you can set them:• Click the Add Variable button.• Enter the name of the environment variable (without the preceding dollar

sign or percent sign) by clicking into the environment variable’s name field.• Enter the value for the environment variable, keeping in mind that when

you apply the server profile to a server, the server may already have this variable set. You may want to reference the server’s existing value in your server profile’s environment variable value (otherwise your server profile’s value is used, and the server’s own value is lost). For example you may set JAVA_OPTS to add a JVM startup switch to the end of the existing value of JAVA_OPTS with a value like "${JAVA_OPTS} -Xmx2048m".• Save your server profile by clicking the Save button at the bottom.

HOW TO USE SERVER PROFILES – STEP 4• Step 4: Apply your server profile to your servers:• Navigate to the top-level Servers tab, then click the All link on the left. This shows you the

list of all of your servers.• Select each of the servers that you wish to apply your new server profile to. You may want to

apply it to just one server first, to test it, but later you may apply it to two or more servers at the same time from this screen.• Click the Set Profile button on the top right. This pulls down a list of the server profiles that

your console has.• Select your new server profile, and it applies remotely to each of the servers you selected.

Some server profiles require a restart of the server JVM in order for the changes to take effect. For example, if you add environment variable settings, or if you add something that Tomcat must find and load at JVM startup time. If so, click the Restart button to restart the affected servers whenever you are ready for the server profile to take effect. Without restarting the JVM, the files and changes from your server profile already store on each of the servers, so these changes pick up whenever those files next load and are used.• To see which server profile is applies to a server, select the server and then click on its

Settings tab. You may also edit the server’s settings and select a server profile there as well.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

• Servers have environment variable settings, and server profiles can have environment variable settings. When Tcat Server applies the server profile to the server, the server profile’s environment variable settings are merged into the server’s environment variable settings. The merging is done such that there is a way to override the server profile’s values at the server level, so that it is possible to have a server profile applied to many servers and have a different environment variable value on one of the servers. The following table shows how Tcat Server merges the environment variables and values when applying a server profile:

Server Profile Env Var Setting

Server’s Env Var Setting

Merged Setting

(undefined) MY_VAR=one two MY_VAR=one twoMY_VAR=three (undefined) MY_VAR=threeMY_VAR=three MY_VAR=one two MY_VAR=one twoMY_VAR=${MY_VAR} three

MY_VAR=one two MY_VAR=one two three

MY_VAR=three ${MY_VAR}

MY_VAR=one two MY_VAR=three one two

• The server’s environment variable setting takes precedence, but the server profile’s value may reference and include the server’s value into its own value.• In addition to supporting referencing the server’s same-variable value,

you may reference other environment variables, JVM system properties, and conditionally set values in your server profile’s environment variable values. This makes server profiles more programmable and multi-platform, and allows you to create server profiles that work on different server operating systems, where each operating system needs different settings that depend on the operating system.• The below table shows some examples of environment variable value

references that Tcat Server supports (as of version 6.4.2):

Server Profile Env Var Setting

Description

${java.io.tmpdir} Replace this reference with the server’s system property value.

${USER} Replace this reference with the current USER environment variable value.

${myVariablefoo} Replace this reference with the system property named "myVariable", or with the environment variable with that name (if any), or with the optional default value of "foo" if neither is defined.

${os.name=Linuxfoo} If the os.name system property is set to "Linux", replace this reference with "foo", otherwise replace the reference with a zero-length string. If the system property isn’t set, the environment variable is also checked and any value is used for the conditional.

${myProp!=myValfoo} If the myProp system property is not set to "myVal", replace this reference with "foo", otherwise check the environment variable named "myProp". If the conditional is found to be false, replace the reference with a zero-length string.

${shell:myVariable} Convert this reference to a shell reference formatted for the shell of the server’s OS, and then write that to the tcat-env.conf file. For example ${myVariable} on non-Windows OSs and %myVariable% on Windows.

SUPPORTED CONDITIONAL OPERATORS

Operator Description

=or== Equals

!= Not Equals

-sw Starts with

-ew Ends with

• In the conditionals, Tcat Server also supports a conditional right hand value of "NULL", meaning a Java null.• BASH variable value substitution syntax like "${FOO//bar/baz}" or "$

{FOO//gone/}" is not processed/substituted (unless a system property name or environment variable name happens to match the whole thing!), and is instead returned without modification so that a BASH shell can interpret it later.• The merging and processing of the environment variable references

and conditionals occurs at the point when you apply a server profile to a server. When the environment variable settings are saved to the server’s tcat-env.conf file, all environment variable settings are formatted for the native shell of the server, and in doing so any file system paths are converted to the shell’s native format as well. This, in combination with conditional values, enables server profile environment variable settings to be multi-platform.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING SERVER PROFILES• You may export your own server profiles from the Tcat Server console

into a zip file to back it up or to share it with other Tcat Server consoles. Navigate to the server profile’s page in the console, and click the Export button. Save your server profile to your local hard drive. You may rename the file, it is a simple zip file. The final file name should contain the name of the server profile (matching the name shown in the console), and the version number of the server profile so that people may use the zip filename to distinguish between different revisions of the same server profile.• You may also import a server profile from a file, to take advantage of

automated Tomcat configuration that was created elsewhere. Just navigate to the top-level Administration tab, then click on Server Profiles on the left, then click on either the Import from File or Import from URL buttons.