Red Hat JBoss Web Server (JWS) combines the Apache web server with the Tomcat servlet engine for building, deploying, and maintaining web applications and large-scale websites. JBoss Web Server version 5 was recently released which supports Tomcat 9 and introduces several new features and enhancements.
Developers may notice that JWS version 4 was skipped; version 4 was only distributed as an embedded version of Apache Tomcat 8.5 in the SpringBoot runtime for Red Hat OpenShift Application Runtimes (RHOAR) and a stand-alone version was not released.
JWS version 5 includes Tomcat 9 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Other platforms will be released soon. Several components have been integrated into JWS version 5 and, according to your subscription agreement, are fully supported for use in both development and production.
JWS has several main components:
- Apache Tomcat servlet container in accordance with the Java Servlet Specification
- Apache Tomcat Native library, which improves Tomcat scalability, performance, and integration
- Tomcat-vault extension for the JBoss Web Server used for securely storing passwords and other sensitive information
- The mod_cluster library allowing communication between Apache Tomcat and Apache HTTP Server’s mod_proxy_cluster module
Along with the main components, there are several new features:
- HTTP/2 support
- Support for using OpenSSL for TLS support with the JSSE connectors (NIO and NIO2)
- The NIO connector is the default for HTTP/1.1 connections when the tomcat-native is installed
- Support for TLS virtual hosting (SNI)
Along with the new features, there are several enhancements:
- System daemon integration scripts are provided for Red Hat Enterprise Linux users who install from .zip archives.
- The tomcat-vault installation process has been improved.
- The vault.properties file for tomcat-vault can be stored outside JWS_HOME.
- There is a change in manager and host-manager web application behavior.
- There is a change to mod_cluster, which requires a connector to be specified.
- Multiple properties files can now be configured.
- Log4j is no longer supported.
- Changes were made to the JBoss Web Server Plus.
- An embedded Tomcat server is included in the JBoss Web Server 5.0 Maven repository.
JBoss Web Server 5 is available in the ZIP or RPM format from the JBoss Web Server 5.0 Maven repository and Container Catalog. Developers looking to get involved can join the Red Hat Developer Program and get access to related cheat sheets, books, and product downloads. Readers can also keep up to date with all Java-related news by visiting the InfoQ Java homepage.