[Geoserver-users] Tomcat or Jetty?

GeoServer GeoServer User
1

Hi List,
So, simple question: Should we stick with the default Jetty or go with Tomcat instead, and more importantly - why? We’re going to be using it on a Windows Server 2008 R2.
What do other folks use? As Jetty already-works for us, is there a reason to justify spending the time swapping to a unfamiliar package?

I’m surprised this hasn’t been asked more often - a search of the archives only found it once and the answer was simply “use tomcat” with no explanation of why.

Cheers,
Jonathan

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2

I am no expert in this, so my comments should be judged in that context. Right now I run geoserver on windows 2008 R2.

Initially I ran geoserver under jetty. It was easy to roll out that way. After reading numerous comments that tomcat gave better performance I switched and it wasn’t difficult to get tomcat installed or geoserver running under tomcat.

Geoserver is the only java servlet I run under tomcat. I have something less than 1500 unique visitors a day hitting my geoserver. I do not think my performance would be very much different under tomcat or jetty.

I know of a similar organization that runs under jetty and their performance is good and the environment is stable.

Tomcat is going to be faster under a load, but I do not think my traffic generates a great load.

So I would ask yourself how much traffic you expect and do you have a need to run other java servlets.

Ralph Dell

From: Jonathan Moules [mailto:jonathanmoules@anonymised.com]
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 6:44 AM
To: geoserver-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Geoserver-users] Tomcat or Jetty?

Hi List,

So, simple question: Should we stick with the default Jetty or go with Tomcat instead, and more importantly - why? We’re going to be using it on a Windows Server 2008 R2.

What do other folks use? As Jetty already-works for us, is there a reason to justify spending the time swapping to a unfamiliar package?

I’m surprised this hasn’t been asked more often - a search of the archives only found it once and the answer was simply “use tomcat” with no explanation of why.

Cheers,

Jonathan

This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.

3

Part of the point of using Java Enterprise Edition is to remain independent from these choices (i.e. it should be up to you, or your IT department, what they want to take the trouble to maintain).

Traditionally Jetty has focused on being a good embeddable component (applications such as Eclipse use it to host local html files for “online help”). It has recently grown up and supports all manner of crazy things such as SPDY, use on google app engine and so on.

Tomcat has always been presented as standalone web server, and being far more popular there is more documentation available on how to deploy it.

But yeah, just take it on cost (both a free but it may be less hassle getting one up and going in your your it environment).

Cheers

–
Jody Garnett

On Friday, 15 March 2013 at 9:44 PM, Jonathan Moules wrote:

Hi List,
So, simple question: Should we stick with the default Jetty or go with Tomcat instead, and more importantly - why? We’re going to be using it on a Windows Server 2008 R2.
What do other folks use? As Jetty already-works for us, is there a reason to justify spending the time swapping to a unfamiliar package?

I’m surprised this hasn’t been asked more often - a search of the archives only found it once and the answer was simply “use tomcat” with no explanation of why.

Cheers,
Jonathan

This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.

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4

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Jonathan Moules <jonathanmoules@…4942…> wrote:

Hi List,
So, simple question: Should we stick with the default Jetty or go with Tomcat instead, and more importantly - why? We’re going to be using it on a Windows Server 2008 R2.
What do other folks use? As Jetty already-works for us, is there a reason to justify spending the time swapping to a unfamiliar package?

I’m surprised this hasn’t been asked more often - a search of the archives only found it once and the answer was simply “use tomcat” with no explanation of why.

The installation package uses Jetty for convenience, it’s small and provides just the functionality needed for people to
quickly try out GeoServer.

At the same time, the Jetty we embed is 6.1.8, which is 4 years old, as such it has received no performance or
security upgrades since back then.

From the point of view of container comparison, I can’t tell that Tomcat is going to be faster, but the general impression
is that it’s by far more used, and indeed my company uses it for all deployments, with no complaints.

Cheers
Andrea

–

==
Our support, Your Success! Visit http://opensdi.geo-solutions.it for more information.

Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead

GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 1660272
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it

5

On 03/16/2013 03:00 AM, Andrea Aime wrote:

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Jonathan Moules <
jonathanmoules@anonymised.com> wrote:

Hi List,
   So, simple question: Should we stick with the default Jetty or go with
Tomcat instead, and more importantly - why? We're going to be using it on a
Windows Server 2008 R2.
What do other folks use? As Jetty already-works for us, is there a reason
to justify spending the time swapping to a unfamiliar package?

I'm surprised this hasn't been asked more often - a search of the archives
only found it once and the answer was simply "use tomcat" with no
explanation of why.

The installation package uses Jetty for convenience, it's small and
provides just the functionality needed for people to
quickly try out GeoServer.

At the same time, the Jetty we embed is 6.1.8, which is 4 years old, as
such it has received no performance or
security upgrades since back then.

That seems kinda silly, is it non-trivial to ship a newer version? Seems like 6.1.x series is still common (6.1.24 on ubuntu 12.04), which I would guess is just fixes.

Thanks,
Alex

6

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev@anonymised.com> wrote:

That seems kinda silly, is it non-trivial to ship a newer version? Seems
like 6.1.x series is still common (6.1.24 on ubuntu 12.04), which I
would guess is just fixes.

It would be silly if we had plenty of time available. However, the situation is exactly
the opposite, the work is distributed over relatively few people (90% of the work is
actually done by < 10 people) and there is a lot to do
(e.g in jira.codehaus.org we have 1093 open tickets… not all bugs, not all valid,
but still…).

Given the situation, one works based on priorities, which during the week pretty
much means “paid work first” (or, if you have plenty, “paid work only”),
and during the spare time, for those that still work on it, well… that has a meaning
varying by person, for example in my case it’s “try to help people contributing changes to GeoServer/GeoTools”,
so, review patches/pull requests, provide indications on how to fix them for contribution,
amend myself the ones that went cold, and occasionally fixing some critical bug
or providing some bit of new functionality.

So, in the best open source spirit, all I can say is “patches welcomed” :-p
(and oh, yes, you can also open a improvement request ticket type at jira.codehaus.org
asking for an upgrade)

Cheers
Andrea

Thanks,
Alex

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–

==
Our support, Your Success! Visit http://opensdi.geo-solutions.it for more information.

Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead

GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 1660272
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it

7

Thanks for the replies folks. Given I only anticipate 100-200 unique users a day, I guess Jetty should be fine. Minimal configuration on our end and we can swap to Tomcat later anyway.

Heading slightly off-topic with the newer-jetty stuff, but I downloaded the latest Jetty 8 stable (8.1.10.v20130312) - it seems to be a drop in replacement for Jetty 6. No special configuration required, just worked.

The only “issue” I’ve had to far is that it didn’t like my jetty-web.xml “fix” to allow POSTing large style layers. So I deleted that file and it turns out that fix isn’t even necessary with Jetty 8!

It may be confirmation bias, but Jetty 8 does seem faster, certainly the admin interface is more responsive.

I appreciate your point Andrea about limited dev resources. On the other hand GeoServer is shipping with a four year old web-server (an age on the Internet) that has since received as best I can tell a considerable number of security fixes just in the 6.x branch. Unfortunately most folks (myself included) lack the technical aptitude to offer patches, so we rely on the generosity of the developers in giving their time. For my part I try and reciprocate with my QA skills by adding to your jira issue count. :wink:

I’ll open an improvement request per your suggestion.

Thanks again,
Jonathan

On 18 March 2013 07:10, Andrea Aime <andrea.aime@anonymised.com> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev@anonymised.com> wrote:

That seems kinda silly, is it non-trivial to ship a newer version? Seems
like 6.1.x series is still common (6.1.24 on ubuntu 12.04), which I
would guess is just fixes.

It would be silly if we had plenty of time available. However, the situation is exactly
the opposite, the work is distributed over relatively few people (90% of the work is
actually done by < 10 people) and there is a lot to do
(e.g in jira.codehaus.org we have 1093 open tickets… not all bugs, not all valid,
but still…).

Given the situation, one works based on priorities, which during the week pretty
much means “paid work first” (or, if you have plenty, “paid work only”),
and during the spare time, for those that still work on it, well… that has a meaning
varying by person, for example in my case it’s “try to help people contributing changes to GeoServer/GeoTools”,
so, review patches/pull requests, provide indications on how to fix them for contribution,
amend myself the ones that went cold, and occasionally fixing some critical bug
or providing some bit of new functionality.

So, in the best open source spirit, all I can say is “patches welcomed” :-p
(and oh, yes, you can also open a improvement request ticket type at jira.codehaus.org
asking for an upgrade)

Cheers

Andrea

Thanks,
Alex

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–

==
Our support, Your Success! Visit http://opensdi.geo-solutions.it for more information.

Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead

GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 1660272
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it

Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar

Geoserver-users mailing list
Geoserver-users@anonymised.comourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-users

This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.

8

2013/3/18 Jonathan Moules <jonathanmoules@anonymised.com>:

I appreciate your point Andrea about limited dev resources. On the other
hand GeoServer is shipping with a four year old web-server (an age on the
Internet) that has since received as best I can tell a considerable number
of security fixes just in the 6.x branch. Unfortunately most folks (myself
included) lack the technical aptitude to offer patches, so we rely on the
generosity of the developers in giving their time. For my part I try and
reciprocate with my QA skills by adding to your jira issue count. :wink:

I'll open an improvement request per your suggestion.

Indeed GeoServer does not ship in one flavour, and jetty is just one
of the alternatives users can choose.
Adding my 2 cents to what Andrea already wrote I think that in the
trade off of spare time versus upgrading GeoServer installer including
jetty costs are higher than returns.
Most of the times you have to deploy web application, i.e. GeoServer,
on an application server someone else choose for you. And chances are
that you will have to work with JBoss or Tomcat

Stefano

---------------------------------------------------
41.95581N 12.52854E

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanoiacovella

http://twitter.com/#!/Iacovellas

9

On 03/18/2013 10:26 AM, Stefano Iacovella wrote:

2013/3/18 Jonathan Moules <jonathanmoules@anonymised.com>:

I appreciate your point Andrea about limited dev resources. On the other
hand GeoServer is shipping with a four year old web-server (an age on the
Internet) that has since received as best I can tell a considerable number
of security fixes just in the 6.x branch. Unfortunately most folks (myself
included) lack the technical aptitude to offer patches, so we rely on the
generosity of the developers in giving their time. For my part I try and
reciprocate with my QA skills by adding to your jira issue count. :wink:

I'll open an improvement request per your suggestion.

Indeed GeoServer does not ship in one flavour, and jetty is just one
of the alternatives users can choose.
Adding my 2 cents to what Andrea already wrote I think that in the
trade off of spare time versus upgrading GeoServer installer including
jetty costs are higher than returns.
Most of the times you have to deploy web application, i.e. GeoServer,
on an application server someone else choose for you. And chances are
that you will have to work with JBoss or Tomcat

Stefano

---------------------------------------------------
41.95581N 12.52854E

If it's on par with a directory swap I suspect there are some users willing to test, as someone just did test jetty 8. Now that I know I can test on ubuntu jetty versions and see how it works.

Is there a test suite, or test procedure to follow to verify that is works, other than loading some layers?

Thanks,
Alex

10

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alex Mandel <tech_dev@anonymised.com> wrote:

If it's on par with a directory swap I suspect there are some users
willing to test, as someone just did test jetty 8. Now that I know I can
test on ubuntu jetty versions and see how it works.

It should be close to a directory swap, but it's not a simple one.
The thing is, GeoServer ships with a minimum set of files and jars
from Jetty to make it run, it does not contain the whole thing.
An update should maintain this minimal setup... and the files might
be different in version 8 (but if you stick on 6 instead, it might well
be a simple replace).

If you are in a mood for a pull request, here is where the new Jetty
files should go:
https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/tree/master/src/release/jetty

Is there a test suite, or test procedure to follow to verify that is
works, other than loading some layers?

Hum... we don't have a formalized procedure. I guess, load some layers,
and check each and every protocol, see if something breaks

Cheers
Andrea

--

Our support, Your Success! Visit http://opensdi.geo-solutions.it for
more information.

Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead

GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 1660272
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://twitter.com/geosolutions_it

-------------------------------------------------------

11

Well, its been a day for me so far and nothing anomalous has been happening. I’m running it in my test environ (the only environ I have at this point actually) in console on Windows server 2008 R2 with Debug logging. The logs aren’t showing anything extraneous either.

I’ve only use a small subset of GeoServer’s capabilities, but so far “drop in replacement” is exactly what it seems to be.

The only difference I can see is that this version of jetty isn’t logging the requests. But a few seconds of googling showed this can be easily enabled (http://wiki.eclipse.org/Jetty/Tutorial/RequestLog) if desired.

Chances are I’ll use it for my live deployment and I’ll get back to this thread if anything odd happens.

Jonathan

On 19 March 2013 16:34, Alex Mandel <tech_dev@anonymised.com> wrote:

On 03/18/2013 10:26 AM, Stefano Iacovella wrote:

2013/3/18 Jonathan Moules <jonathanmoules@anonymised.com>:

I appreciate your point Andrea about limited dev resources. On the other
hand GeoServer is shipping with a four year old web-server (an age on the
Internet) that has since received as best I can tell a considerable number
of security fixes just in the 6.x branch. Unfortunately most folks (myself
included) lack the technical aptitude to offer patches, so we rely on the
generosity of the developers in giving their time. For my part I try and
reciprocate with my QA skills by adding to your jira issue count. :wink:

I’ll open an improvement request per your suggestion.

Indeed GeoServer does not ship in one flavour, and jetty is just one
of the alternatives users can choose.
Adding my 2 cents to what Andrea already wrote I think that in the
trade off of spare time versus upgrading GeoServer installer including
jetty costs are higher than returns.
Most of the times you have to deploy web application, i.e. GeoServer,
on an application server someone else choose for you. And chances are
that you will have to work with JBoss or Tomcat

Stefano

41.95581N 12.52854E

If it’s on par with a directory swap I suspect there are some users
willing to test, as someone just did test jetty 8. Now that I know I can
test on ubuntu jetty versions and see how it works.

Is there a test suite, or test procedure to follow to verify that is
works, other than loading some layers?

Thanks,
Alex

Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar

Geoserver-users mailing list
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https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-users

This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.