iSeries V6R1 and V7R1 Apache Tomcat Replacement

Tomcat support dropped by IBM as of V6R1 - MOD_JK missing

IBM has stopped supporting Tomcat as of V6R1. If you want to run latest Tomcat from Apache on IBM i that's not an issue. I have installed and run Tomcat on the iSeries version V7R1 without any issue. But the if you want to put it behind the Apache HTTP server using the mod_jk ajp connector that's where the trouble begins. IBM has taken out the jk_module from the V6R1 and V7R1 and I have failed to compile it from source and run it. If someone has done it please post your solution here.

Integrated Web Application Server for i

What IBM came up with is the Integrated Web Application Server for i. It comes preinstalled and supported by IBM PTFs. It has smaller memory footprint.

The Integrated Web Application Server (IAS), included in the IBM i 4.5 and IBM i 6.1 operating system, addresses the need for a minimal footprint, easy to configure, secure infrastructure for hosting Web applications. IAS enables a subset of the full Java™ 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification; if your application uses from among static web components (HTML, images, docs, etc.), servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSPs) and/or JavaServer Faces (JSF) components, this alternative to the IBM WebSphere® Application Server environment requires less memory resources to deploy and run your application. The added benefit of requiring less memory to run this server makes it attractive on smaller-footprint IBM i hardware.

Comparisons to other Application Servers

The Integrated Web Application Server compares very favorable to other well know Web based application servers. Due to the power of the OSGI framework the IAS server can take advantage some of the same components that other servers make use of. For example the ‘Web container’ used by IAS is the exact
same Web container that is used by WebSphere. The database pooling code is the same database container that is used by the ASF Tomcat server. The IAS server has been able to leverage pieces from several technologies to produce this versatile and light weight server.

Install Directory Structure

The IAS server is installed to a ‘proddata’ location, like many IBM i products. The install location is ‘/QIBM/Proddata/OS/OSGI/LWI71’. It is important that files under this path are not modified in anyway. If files under this path are changed, then all IAS servers on the system will be changed. This is likely not the desired
behavior.

I will be setting this server up and will update how to use this Web Server and deploy WAR files tested using Tomcat and eclipse !

Recommended Reading

• Setup IBM Integrated Web Application Server for i