5.0

16 vFabric Web Server
16
Creating and Using vFabric Web
Server Instances
a lack of permissions, start a new command window and use the runas command to execute commands from the new
window instead of the original one:
prompt> runas /user:administrator "cmd.exe /k"
2. Change to the bin subdirectory of the root directory for the vFabric Web Server instance.
For example, if you created an instance called myserver that lives in the installation directory c:\vmware\vfabric-
web-server:
prompt> cd c:\vmware\vfabric-web-server\myserver\bin
3. Install the instance as a Windows service by running the httpdctl.bat install command:
prompt> httpdctl.bat install
Subsequently use the Windows Services console to start, stop, and restart the vFabric Web Server instance. The name of the
instance in the Windows Services console is vFabric httpd servername. Also use the Windows Services control
panel to configure whether the service starts automatically when Windows starts, and so on.
4. To test that the vFabric Web Server instance actually started, navigate to the http://host:port URL in your browser,
where host is the host computer (you can use localhost if your browser is on the same computer), and port is the
HTTP port number you provided when you created the instance. The default value on Windows is 8080.
For example, if you are using the default ports on your local computer, use this URL:
http://localhost:8080
If the vFabric Web Server instance started successfully, you should see the Welcome page.
5. To uninstall the vFabric Web Server instance as a Windows service, use the following command:
prompt> cd c:\vmware\vfabric-web-server\myserver\bin
prompt> httpdctl.bat uninstall
What to do next
• Complete the procedure in Serve a Sample HTML File from your vFabric Web Server Instance.
• Configure your instance as described in Configuring vFabric Web Server.
Serve a Sample HTML File from Your vFabric Web Server Instance
After you install vFabric Web Server and create an instance, you can use it to host your entire Web site. This section does not
describe the entire process; rather, it simply shows how to serve an HTML file from the default document root of your instance.
Prerequisites
• Create and start a vFabric Web Server instance. See Create vFabric Web Server Instances.
• Create or download one or more sample HTML pages that you want to serve from the instance.
Procedure
1. Open the configuration file for your vFabric Web Server instance and make note of the value of the DocumentRoot
directive, which is the directory out of which the instance serves your documents. By default, vFabric Web Server takes all
requests from this directory.