Tomcat - Multiple Instances using same outside directory

Question

Hi all,

We're looking into running multiple instances of Tomcat from the same copy of the code base. Our current setup is using a Root.xml context setting to load our application from an outside directory rather than from webapps or a war file, for example /build. What I'd like to do is start both instances using the same directory but I'm not sure if any file locking may cause performance issue or even bugs. Especially with regard to properties files and spring configuartion files. Does anyone have any advice on this?

Answer 1

I do this all the time on Tomcat 5.5. Haven't encountered any issues. Just to make sure to add following attributes to your Context,

  <Context ... antiJARLocking="true" antiResourceLocking="true" />

Of course, you need to externalize all your instance-specific configurations. That's the most complicated process when we did this.