Step‑by‑Step Guide to Install, Configure, and Optimize Apache Tomcat

Introduction

Apache Tomcat is an open‑source servlet container and JSP engine. It runs as an independent Java process and is commonly used for development and small‑to‑medium production deployments.

Prerequisites

Java Development Kit (JDK) must be installed; the JDK provides the JVM required to run Tomcat.

Installation Steps

1. Install JDK

# rm -rf $(which java)
# tar xf jdk-7u80-linux-x64.tar
# mv jdk1.7.0_80/ /usr/local/java

2. Extract Tomcat

# tar xf apache-tomcat-8.5.20.tar.gz
# mv apache-tomcat-8.5.20 /usr/local/tomcat8

3. Configure environment variables

export JAVA_HOME="/usr/local/java"
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin:/usr/local/tomcat8/bin
. /etc/profile

4. Verify Java installation

java -version

5. Start and stop Tomcat

/usr/local/tomcat8/bin/startup.sh
/usr/local/tomcat8/bin/shutdown.sh

6. Change default ports

Edit /usr/local/tomcat8/conf/server.xml and modify the values of the Connector ports (e.g., 8080 → 9528, 8005 → 9529, 8009 → 9530).

7. Firewall / SELinux

Open the chosen ports in the firewall or disable firewalld/SELinux for testing (e.g., systemctl stop firewalld, setenforce 0).

Tomcat Directory Layout

/usr/local/tomcat8
  bin/        # startup/shutdown scripts
  conf/       # configuration files (server.xml, web.xml, etc.)
  lib/        # required JAR libraries
  logs/       # log files
  webapps/    # deployed web applications
  work/       # compiled JSP classes

Optimization

Disable AJP connector

<!-- <Connector port="8009" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443"/> -->

Use NIO protocol

<Connector port="8080" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"/>

External thread pool

<Executor name="tomcatThreadPool" maxThreads="1000" minSpareThreads="100"/>
<Connector executor="tomcatThreadPool" port="8080" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol" maxThreads="1000" minSpareThreads="100" maxSpareThreads="200" acceptCount="1000" disableUploadTimeout="true" connectionTimeout="20000" URIEncoding="UTF-8" enableLookups="false" compression="on" compressionMinSize="2048" compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/javascript,text/css,text/plain,image/gif,image/jpg,image/png" redirectPort="8443"/>

JVM tuning for production

JAVA_OPTS="-server -Xms1024m -Xmx2048m -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+UseParallelGCThreads=8 -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=80 -XX:+UseCMSCompactAtFullCollection -Xloggc:../logs/gc.log"

Sample server.xml connector configuration

<Connector executor="tomcatThreadPool" port="8080" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
    maxThreads="1000" minSpareThreads="100" maxSpareThreads="200" acceptCount="1000"
    disableUploadTimeout="true" connectionTimeout="20000" URIEncoding="UTF-8"
    enableLookups="false" compression="on" compressionMinSize="2048"
    compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/javascript,text/css,text/plain,image/gif,image/jpg,image/png"
    redirectPort="8443"/>

Conclusion

Following these steps installs Tomcat, configures the required JDK, customizes ports, and applies performance enhancements such as NIO connectors, an external thread pool, and JVM options, preparing the server for production workloads.