Hosting Multiple Domains On A Single Apache HTTPD / Tomcat Server Combination

This is a quick and easy guide on how to deploy multiple domains on a single Tomcat sever fronted by a single Apache HTTPD server. I am assuming you already have installed mod_jk and got the communication between Apache and Tomcat working.

First the Tomcat changes ( I am using Tomcat 7 but it should work the same in Tomcat 6 too). Edit server.xml file in conf directory and scroll down until you see the <Host> section there. Copy the host section and paste it again so you have two host sections and modify the name attributes to contain the two domain names. Also point appBase attributes to two different folders (create them under the Tomcat directory). You will deploy your apps to the ROOT folders under each appbase directory so that they can be accessed as http://www.domain1.com and http://www.domain2.com


workers.properties can be as simple as following two lines. Which connects to the worker w1 to ajp port of Tomcat.

worker.list=w1

worker.w1.port=8009

Now to the Apache 2 configuration. Make sure you have uncommented NameVirtualHost *:80 line in httpd.conf. Now add two <VirtualHost> sections for the two domains as below. Note that I have left out other mod_jk configuration directives.

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName www.domain1.com

    JkMount  /* w1

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName www.domain2.com

    JkMount  /* w1

</VirtualHost>

Apache HTTPD Redirect Root URL to Sub Context / Directory

Yesterday I had to front an application running on Tomcat with Apache HTTPD server and one of the requirements was to automatically redirect the root URL to the Tomcat's web app context

e.g. http://www.mycompany.com to http://www.mycompany.com/application

Sounded pretty simple and did a Google search, went through few pages that had examples on how to do it but none of them worked. Most involved .htaccess files and using RewiteCond /RewriteRule combinations.

I was getting frustrated with finding a simple solution for the simple problem and after about an hour of searching and trying things I finally found the simple solution that worked. All it needed was the following single line in your VirtualHost section.

RedirectMatch ^/$ /application/

That's it and it will redirect all requests to root URL to the specified sub directory or sub context.