Deploy web application on multiple tomcat servers

This tutorial shows how to deploy a war on a tomcat server and activate the changes via tomcat's administration application. The KwateeSDCM configuration can easily be changed to deploy on 2, 9, 21, ... instances. You can read through or simply watch this video.


Note: make sure you have defined a user with role manager in tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml).

We will illustrate this tutorial with a sample web application name HelloExample. The WEB-INF/web.xml within HelloExample.war contains a servlet initialization parameter named greeting whose value has been templatized with the KwateeSDCM deployment variable %{HELLO_MESSAGE} so that we may easily customize the deployment without modifying the war archive.

You can download the HelloExample.war package here.
This tutorial relies on curl to automate the start/stop of the web application. If your tomcat server is running on windows you can download a windows curl executable here and make it accessible on the server's path.

1. Create a sdcm package

• Create a new package named HelloExample
• Create a new version named v1.0
• Select and upload the archive HelloExample.war
• Create an executable named war
• In the Launch script field, enter:
  curl --basic --user %{TOMCAT_USER}:%{TOMCAT_PASSWORD} http://localhost:8080/manager/start?path=/HelloExample
  (single command line with a <space> before http...)
• In the Stop script field, enter:
  curl --basic --user %{TOMCAT_USER}:%{TOMCAT_PASSWORD} http://localhost:8080/manager/stop?path=/HelloExample
  (single command line with a <space> before http...)
• Save

2. Define the target server(s)

• Create a new server named MyTomcatHost
• Select the appropriate platform
• Enter the IP address of the server (e.g. localhost)
• Enter the SRM-level user name/password to connect to your server
  Make sure the user you select has write privileges on tomcat's webapps directory
  (i.e. /usr/local/tomcat/webapps) as well as on kwatee's working directory defined in sdcm's system parameter sdcm_root_dir (defaults to /kwatee)
• Save
• Repeat the above for as many servers as you like

3. Define the environment

• Create a new environment named hello_environment
• Add MyTomcatHost server to deployment
• Add HelloExample package to MyTomcatHost server and set active version to v1.0
• Save, then Configure SDCM Variables
• Add variable named HELLO_MESSAGE with value Hello world
• Add variable named TOMCAT_USER with value manager
  (or whatever your manager user is)
• Add variable named TOMCAT_PASSWORD with value password
• Add variable name sdcm_deployment_dir with value
  /usr/local/tomcat/webapps (or whatever you tomcat path is)
• Save

4. Deploy and test

• Go to the Environments list and manage environment hello_environment
• Install the package
• Point your browser to http://localhost:8080/HelloExample

==> You should see Hello world in your browser

5. Update the configuration and re-deploy

• Go back to the deployment variables configuration and change the HELLO_MESSAGE value to Hello new world
• Save and return to environment management
• Install the package
• Point your browser to http://localhost:8080/HelloExample

==> You should now see Hello new world in your browser

The steps of this tutorial are illustrated in this video