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Tomcat installation guidelines for Windows server

Warning: before choosing this "traditional" installation procedure you should consider other approches such as using Docker containers.

This document only gives only very general guidelines, not a detailled/precise procedure.

If needed refer to the Linux installation document for more details.

Databases​

Download and install the chosen up-to-date database engine server suitable for your target Simplicité platfor and suitable for your version of Windows (see this document for databases compliance details):

  • MySQL/MariaDB
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLServer
  • Oracle

There is nothing to do if you use an embedded HSQLDB.

JVM​

Dowload and install an up to date Java VM Developpement Kit (or a Runtime Environment if you don't plan to do debugging) in the appropriate version for your target Simplicité platform version and suitable for your version of Windows (see this document for JVM compliance details).

Register the JAVA_HOME environment variable as the path of your JVM Installation (e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-x.y.z) and add %JAVA_HOME%\bin to the system PATH.

Tomcat​

Clone the preconfigured Tomcat package (which is just an out of the box Tomcat package with administration webapps removed, with some settings fine-tuned and with some additional jars in the lib folder) with appropriate credentials:

git clone https://<username>[:<password>]@platform.git.simplicite.io/tomcat.git

Make sure the tomcat\temp folder is present and writeable, this is mandatory for images thumbnails generation.

Then, make sure the tomcat\logs folder is present and writeable, this is mandatory for logging.

Register the TOMCAT_HOME environment variable as the path of your Tomcat Installation (e.g. C:\Users\Administrator\tomcat).

To start with, just change the plain HTTP Tomcat connector port number in conf/server.xml from 8080 to 80 and inhibitate other connectors (these other connectors are to be used in more complex situations such as mounting Tomcat behind a reverse proxy or make Tomcat handle SSL etc. These cases requires additional installation/preraration/configuration steps that are not described here).

Install Tomcat as a service:

	cd tomcat\bin
	.\service.bat install
	.\tomcat9.exe //US//Tomcat9 ++JvmOptions -server;-Dserver.vendor=tomcat;-Dserver.version=9;-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8;-Dgit.basedir=C:\Users\Administrator\git;-Dplatform.autoupgrade=true --JvmMs 256 --JvmMx 1024 --Startup auto

Note that the C:\Users\Administrator base folder, and the above 256 / 1024 Mb values for allocated memory are just given as examples. Adjust these to match your configuration.

Note: If you don't install the above service make sure your Tomcat startup script defines at least the same JVM options as the one defined for the above service.

Adjust security level and firewall settings to publicly expose the Tomcat corrector's port(s) accordingly to your needs.

Simplicité​

Clone the Simplicité webapp instance template of your target platform version:

	git clone https://<username>[:<password>]@platform.git.simplicite.io/template-<version>.git

Where <version> is one of the available versions, e.g. 4.0

Note: as of version 4.0 there are several branches on the instance template, make sure to use only the release branch in production, see this document for details on versions and branches.

We thus recommend that you only clone the release branch by adding --single-branch --branch release to the git clone instruction above.

Initial database setup​

This is only required for the initial installation.

Create the database with UTF-8 encoding and the database user with appropriate rights (create table, alter table, select/insert/update/delete).

Then load the database using the appropriate dump file provided in the instances template. MySQL/MariaDB and PostgresQL dump files are available by default in the app/WEB-INF/db folder, for other databases please contact us to get an up-to-date dump.

Note: This setup not required with an embedded HSQLDB database.

Deploy webapp​

Stop the Tomcat service.

Create or replace the webapp from the instance template : copy the app folder as the tomcat/webapps/ROOT.

Adjust the database connexion pool settings accordingly to your database installaion in tomcat/webapps/ROOT/META-INF/context.xml.

Start the Tomcat service.

Maintenance​

Simplicité upgrades​

The Simplicité platform is regularly updated: the stable (release) versions receive mainly fixes and sometimes minor changes, the other unstable versions receive fixes and potentially major changes.

To benefit from our support you must upgrade the deployed version of the platform as soon as the upgrades are made available.

Base components upgrades​

The base components such as the Java JVM and the Tomcat server are also regularly upgraded by their repective vendors.

The Simplicité platform is only validated and tested with up-to-date stable versions of these components (the ones that are shipped in our Docker images). Our support is thus only avaible if you use these recommended up-to-date components.

  • We thus highly recommend that you use and keep upgraded our preconfigured Tomcat package described above. We push the up-to-date version of Tomcat on it as soon as it is released.
  • We also recommend that you maintain your JVM up-to-date on a very regular basis (Oracle issues a JVM major version every 6 months).
  • And, of course, we recommend that you keep your Windows platform up-to-date.

Security guidelines​

Make sure to review our security guidelines

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