5.2

Installing vFabric Web Server 13
VMware vFabric Suite 5.2 13
Description of the vFabric Web Server Installation
The main vFabric Web Server directory structure, although similar in many ways to the standard Apache HTTP directory layout,
differs from it in a very fundamental way: vFabric Web Server separates the runtime binaries from the configuration data.
To implement this separation, you use the newserver command to create a vFabric Web Server instance that lives in a
subdirectory of the main vFabric Web Server home directory. The name of the instance is the name of the new subdirectory. You
then configure this instance as you want, using the standard Apache httpd files in the server-name/conf directory, such as
httpd.conf.
Perform all configuration work inside the server instance (server-name/conf) directory. Never modify any
files under the binary directory (such as httpd-2.2).
Keeping the runtime binary files apart from the files that are configured by administrators or end users makes it easier to upgrade
or apply patches to the code without the risk of overwriting or corrupting user data. It also enables administrators to run multiple
server instances independently.
Directly after installing vFabric Web Server, you see the following files and directories:
• httpd-2.2/ : Symbolic link to a sibling directory that actually contains the Apache 2.2 binary runtime files.
• httpd-2.2.version/ : Directory that contains the actual Apache 2.2 binary runtime files. The 2.2.version string
specifies the Apache HTTP version, such as 2.2.23.0 or 2.2.23.0-64.
• licenses/ : EULA and open source license files.
• newserver : (Unix) Perl script for creating vFabric Web Server instances.
• newserver.ps1 : (Windows) PowerShell script for creating vFabric Web Server instances.
• fixrootpath.pl : (Unix) Perl script for fixing root paths; run only once.
• fixrootpath.ps1 : (Windows) PowerShell script for fixing root paths; run only once.
After you use newserver to create a new vFabric Web Server instance, the command creates a new directory that contain a
separately configurable instance of vFabric Web Server. An instance is a complete, discrete server configuration. You can create
multiple instances. You can run multiple instances at the same time if you are careful not to use the same ports in two different
instances. For example, the default HTTP listening port is 80, and only one instance on any computer is allowed to communicate
on port 80 at any one time. So if you wanted to have two vFabric Web Server instances running at the same time on the same
computer, you would configure one instance to use a port other than 80.
Each instance directory contains subdirectories that contain all the data required to run a given vFabric Web Server instance. This
includes configuration data as well as all other data that is associated with that instance's configuration. For example, assume you
installed vFabric Web Server in /opt/vmware/vfabric-web-server and create an instance called myserver:
prompt$ cd /opt/vmware/vfabric-web-server/myserver
prompt$ ls
bin cgi-bin conf ftpdocs htdocs logs proxy ssl var
The conf directory contains the vFabric Web Server configuration files, such as httpd.conf. The bin directory contains the
startup script used to start and stop the myserver instance (httpdctl. Each of these directories is specific to the myserver
instance. Each instance that you create has a similar set of directories.