A vFabric Web Server instance is a complete, discrete HTTP server configuration.

You can create multiple instances that you can run simultaneously on the same computer if you do not use the same ports in two different instances. For example, the default HTTP listening port on Unix 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 Unix computer, you configure one instance to use a port other than 80.

After you create an instance, its corresponding directory contains subdirectories that in turn contain all the data required to run a given vFabric Web Server instance. This data includes configuration information and 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 you create will have a similar set of directories.