Tomcat vs Pivotal tc Server

java tomcat sts-springsourcetoolsuite spring-tool-suite tcserver
Steve Chambers picture Steve Chambers · May 2, 2014 · Viewed 37.1k times · Source

Could anyone advise as to the pros and cons of using Pivotal tc Server as opposed to just vanilla Tomcat for a Spring-MVC Java web application? Could find very little about Pivotal other than on their website and the fact it's packaged as part of the Spring Tool Suite. This lack of info is making me a bit wary about being dependent on it...

Background: Am preparing the development environment for a Spring-MVC project and currently evaluating whether to use the packaged Spring Tool Suite (STS) or just start with the latest Eclipse (possibly combined with the Eclipse STS plugin). Came across Pivotal tc Server as one of the optional components in this plugin.

Answer

Carwin picture Carwin · May 20, 2014

Pivotal tc Server contains all of vanilla Tomcat, and has a few optional extensions designed to make it easier to deploy and maintain. Broken out into three groups, the diff looks like this:

Configuration extensions (No altered code, just config changes we implement)

  • Multi-Instance using shared binaries
    • Trivial to change Tomcat versions while preserving app and configuration
  • Variable Substitution in config files
  • Async Logging
  • Mild Security Tuning (ports, mgmt apps, JMX)

Code Extensions

  • Patch version releases – fix flaws in current release [e.g. tomcat-7.0.32.B.RELEASE]
  • Extended JMX interface
    • Additional Metrics
    • Application Deployment
  • Diagnostics Valve - good troubleshooting info when there's a slowdown
  • Config Templates – including custom-created
  • Change log level on the fly
  • Advanced Session replication (Gemfire)
  • Oracle DB Connection Proxy

Add-Ons

  • Windows Service Wrapper
  • RPM / Apt-Get / Debian installers (linux)
  • Startup scripts (linux)
  • Chef Recipes
  • Puppet Scripts
  • Password Encryption
  • Spring Insight for performance tuning

FYI on the tag thing, there's still the old "springsource-tc-server" tag. SpringSource is now Pivotal. (Can/should we update the tag or add a new one?)

Hope this helps.

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