5.0

Configuring vFabric Web Server
Instances
19
VMware vFabric Cloud Application
Platform 5.0 19
5. Configuring vFabric Web Server Instances
The default configuration of a newly created vFabric Web Server instance is fairly simple. Although the configuration is likely
adequate for your needs, sometimes you might need to further configure the instance to enable one of its many useful features,
such as load-balancing between two or more tc Server instances. This chapter provides some information to get you started.
For complete documentation on how to configure vFabric Web Server instances, see Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2
Documentation. Because vFabric Web Server is based on Apache HTTP server, the general configuration documentation on the
Apache Web site applies to vFabric Web Server as well.
Subtopics
Using the Sample Configuration Files to Enable Features and Modify Configuration
Configure Load Balancing Between Two or More tc Runtime Instances
Using Sample Configuration Files to Enable Features and Modify
Configuration
All vFabric Web Server instances include sample configuration files that you can use to enable extra features in the server
instance or to modify its default configuration. These files are located in the INSTANCE-DIR/conf/extra directory, where
INSTANCE-DIR refers to the instance directory, such as /opt/vmware/vfabric-web-server/myserver.
For example, the httpd-info.conf sample configuration file shows how you can get information about the requests being
processed by the vFabric Web Server instance as well as information about the configuration of the instance. The httpd-
ssl.conf file shows how to provide SSL support. It contains the configuration directives to instruct the instance how to serve
pages over an HTTPS connection.
For your convenience, the main vFabric Web Server configuration file for a particular instance (INSTANCE-DIR/conf/
httpd.conf) already includes commented-out lines for including each sample configuration file. For example, the line to
include the httpd-info.conf configuration file is as follows:
#Include conf/extra/httpd-info.conf
To include the configuration file, simply uncomment the Include directive:
Include conf/extra/httpd-info.conf
You do not have to use Include in this way; you can simply copy and paste the information in a sample configuration file into
the main configuration file.
The sample configuration files are full of comments on how exactly to enable the feature they configure. Be sure to read these
comments before you proceed further.
Configure Load Balancing Between Two or More tc Runtime Instances
You can configure a vFabric Web Server instance to perform simple load balancing between two or more tc Runtime instances.
In the procedure that follows, you configure a vFabric Web Server instance to run in front of the tc Runtime instances; this
vFabric Web Server instance receives all requests from users, and then passes them back to the tc Runtime instances using a
specified load-balancing algorithm. Responses from the tc Runtime instances are then routed back through this same vFabric
Web Server instance. For this reason, the vFabric Web Server instance acts like a proxy (both reverse and forward) so that the
users never know the URLs of the backend tc Runtime instance that are actually doing all the work. Additionally, the vFabric
Web Server instance ensures that the load on each tc Runtime instance is balanced. You can specify that each tc Runtime instance
take on an equal work load, or you can specify that one instance work twice as hard as the others.
In the procedure, the following scenario pertains. These assumptions are not requirements; your environment might be very
different. The assumptions are listed only to make the procedure easier to understand.