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 Runtime 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 Server Instances

Configure SSL Between vFabric Web Server and vFabric tc Server

Configure BMX for Monitoring vFabric Web Server 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.

What to do next

Restart the vFabric Web Server instance for the configuration changes to take effect. For example, on Unix:
```
prompt# cd /opt/vmware/vfabric-web-server/myserver
prompt# bin/httpdctl restart
```