Glassfish with Apache. Why SSL?

Question

I have been looking around to figure out how to configure Glassfish front ended with Apache. And most of the tutorials using the load balancing plug in is making me enable SSL on Apache. I am trying to understand the connection. I should be able to do non SSL communications when I dont have a need for SSL.

Answer 1

There are several blog posts showing how you can use Apache in front of Glassfish. There are several options and depending on your needs, different strategies might be the most appropriate.

I've used Apache with mod_jk which forwards requests to Glassfish - both https and regular http. Lots of good references here.

It's possible to use other modules in Apache also like mod_proxy, but again the requirements you have will flesh out the most appropriate.

Glassfish also have pretty good http engine inside of it where you can configure virtual hosts like in apache. If the load on the Glassfish server isn't to big, you might consider just using Glassfish without anything in front of it.

Answer 2

You can also use the Sun Java System Web Server SJSWS instead of Apache. Despite it's atrocious name, it is just Sun's web server (free to use). It can be used as a reverse proxy (PDF). The SJWS/Glassfish combination is presumably tested really well by Sun.