VMware vFabric Web Server - 5.0 Installation Manual
vFabric Web Server Installation and
Configuration
VMware vFabric Web Server 5.0
VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform 5.0
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Table of Contents
1. About vFabric Web Server Installation and Configuration .............................................................................. 1
Intended Audience ......................................................................................................................... 1
2. Overview of vFabric Web Server ............................................................................................................ 3
Complete Packages and Modules in vFabric Web Server 5.0 ...................................................................... 3
Supported Platforms ....................................................................................................................... 4
3. Installing vFabric Web Server ................................................................................................................ 5
RHEL: Install vFabric Web Server from the VMware Package Repository ...................................................... 5
Linux: Install vFabric Web Server from a Self-Extracting ZIP ..................................................................... 6
Windows: Install vFabric Web Server from a ZIP File .............................................................................. 7
Description of vFabric Web Server Installation ...................................................................................... 8
4. Creating and Using vFabric Web Server Instances ...................................................................................... 11
Description of vFabric Web Server Instances ....................................................................................... 11
Create vFabric Web Server Instances ................................................................................................. 11
newserver Prompts and Command Reference ....................................................................................... 12
Linux: Start and Stop vFabric Web Server Instances ............................................................................... 14
Windows: Start and Stop vFabric Web Server Instances .......................................................................... 15
Serve a Sample HTML File from Your vFabric Web Server Instance ........................................................... 16
5. Configuring vFabric Web Server Instances ............................................................................................... 19
Using Sample Configuration Files to Enable Features and Modify Configuration ............................................. 19
Configure Load Balancing Between Two or More tc Runtime Instances ........................................................ 19
6. Additional Documentation ................................................................................................................... 25
VMware vFabric Cloud Application
Platform 5.0 iii
iv vFabric Web Server
About vFabric Web Server Installation
and Configuration
1. About vFabric Web Server Installation and Configuration
VMware vFabric Web Server Installation and Configuration describes product concepts and product-specific configuration
tasks for VMware® vFabric™ Web Server. Fully compatible with Apache Web Server, vFabric Web Server is a dynamic loadbalancing service that is available exclusively with VMware® vFabric™ Cloud Application Platform. Read this documentation
for an overview of vFabric Web Server features, installation instructions, and information on how to configure functionality that
is specific to vFabric Web Server.
Intended Audience
vFabric Web Server Installation and Configuration is intended for experienced Windows and Linux developers and system
administrators who want to install a Web Server on a virtual machine to serve static Web content, act as a proxy, or load balance
between application servers such as VMware® vFabric™ tc Server.
1
VMware vFabric Cloud Application
Platform 5.0 1
2 vFabric Web Server
About vFabric Web Server Installation
2
and Configuration
Overview of vFabric Web Server 3
2. Overview of vFabric Web Server
vFabric Web Server is the Web server and load-balancing component of VMware vFabric Cloud Application Platform (vFabric
Platform). vFabric Web Server 5.0 is based on Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.
In addition to the standard features of Apache HTTP Server, vFabric Web Server provides the following mission-critical benefits:
• Ability to easily install multiple instances of vFabric Web Server running on a single computer.
• Scalable management of multiple Web sites and servers; you can run and manage hundreds of instances of vFabric Web
Server.
• Support for heterogeneous environments (32- and 64-bit architectures): Ubuntu, RHEL, and Microsoft Windows. vFabric Web
Server can be updated and patched across all servers at once. See Supported Platforms for details.
Subtopics
Complete Packages and Modules in vFabric Web Server 5
Supported Platforms
Complete Packages and Modules in vFabric Web Server 5.0
This section lists the complete contents of vFabric Web Server 5.0.
This document describes features and functionality for vFabric Web Sever 5.0. For general information about new
features in Apache HTTP Server 2.2, see the Apache Web site.
• Core Apache HTTP 2.2 Binaries
• Apache mod_ftp 0.9.6
• Apache mod_fcgid 2.3.6 (a FastCGI invoker)
• OpenSSL 0.9.8r
• OpenLDAP 2.3.43
• mod_jk 1.2.31
• mod_bmx (Hyperic plug-in for monitoring support)
• libexpat 2.0.1
• libapr 1.4.3
• libaprutil 1.3.11
• zlib 1.2.3
mod_fcgid Implementation of Connector to FastCGI
The mod_fcgid distributed with vFabric Web Server 5.0 is an implementation of the connector to FastCGI applications. This
module allows the user to provision FastCGI providers such as PHP or Ruby on Rails from third parties, running out-of-process
from the server itself.
Many applications can be built to support FastCGI; consult your language or application documentation for details. The
application providing FastCGI services is launched by mod_fcgid on the initial request, and reused for subsequent requests to that
application or language environment.
VMware vFabric Cloud Application
Platform 5.0 3
4 vFabric Web Server
For details on configuring an application, including the number of persistent processes created, see Apache Module mod_fcgid.
Open SSL 0.9.8r Supports SSLFIPS and SSLInsecureRenegotiation Directives
The mod_ssl directive SSLInsecureRenegotiation supports per-directory/per-server client certificate renegotiation with legacy
clients.
Users are strongly cautioned to update all clients to use only the new TLS Renegotiation mechanism.
The OpenSSL 0.9.8r build is vendor-affirmed to comply with OpenSSL FIPS Security Policy document v1.2. In order to use
the FIPS 140-2 validated mode of operation (which relies on NIST-approved, but slower algorithms) for mod_ssl cryptography,
simply add the new 'SSLFIPS on' directive. A log entry indicates whether FIPS mode is enabled. A warning that 512-byte
temporary key generation is skipped is logged at startup. This behavior is correct (512 byte keys are disallowed for FIPS use).
See Apache Module mod_ssl .
Supported Platforms
TCP/IPv6 is required on all platforms. Modern platforms have this support installed already. It is not necessary to configure IPv6
adapters; simply install the IPv6 socket support drivers and associated libraries. Vendor patch sets for compatibility with the
current release of vendor Java are recommended for all vFabric Web Server installations, because the operating system flaws that
affect sockets and multi-threaded services for Java similarly affect vFabric Web Server and its support libraries.
Table 2.1. vFabric Web Server 5.0 Supported Platforms
Operating System Processor Package Format
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 x86 (32- and 64-bit) RPM and self-extracting ZIP (.zip.sfx)
Ubuntu 10.04 x86 (64-bit) Self-extracting ZIP (.zip.sfx)
Windows 2003 x86 (32-bit) Self-extracting ZIP (.zip.exe)
Windows 2008 x86 (32- and 64-bit) Self-extracting ZIP (.zip.exe)
4 Overview of vFabric Web Server
Installing vFabric Web Server 5
3. Installing vFabric Web Server
vFabric Web Server is available only as part of vFabric Cloud Application Platform, which in turn runs only on vSphere. This
means that you install vFabric Web Server on virtual machines that run on the vCenter Server. These VMs can run Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Linux, or Windows operating systems. Each type of operating system requires its own installation
procedure.
Subtopics
RHEL: Install vFabric Web Server from the VMware Package Repository
Linux: Install vFabric Web Server from a Self-Extracting ZIP
Windows: Install vFabric Web Server from a Self-Extracting ZIP File
Description of the vFabric Web Server Installation
RHEL: Install vFabric Web Server from the VMware Package Repository
When installing vFabric Web Server on a Red Hat Linux Enterprise (RHEL) virtual machine, it is recommended that you use
yum from the VMware package repository.
Prerequisites
• Create a virtual machine on your vCenter Server and install RHEL on it. See Supported Platforms for the list of supported
platforms for vFabric Web Server.
• Log in to the RHEL VM as the root user and start a terminal.
• Install the vfabric-5-repo RPM using the rpm command. This RPM makes it easy for you to browse the vFabric RPMs
available from the VMware repository:
prompt# rpm -Uvh http://repo.vmware.com/pub/rhel5/vfabric/5/vfabric-5-repo-5-2.noarch.rpm
Use the yum search vfabric command to view the list of vFabric components that you can install from the VMware
repository. The vFabric Web Server RPM is called vfabric-web-server.
Procedure
1. From the RHEL VM on which you will install vFabric Web Server, log in as the root user.
2. Execute the following yum command:
prompt# yum install vfabric-web-server
The yum command begins the install process, resolves dependencies, and displays the packages it plans to install.
The yum command automatically chooses the appropriate RPM package based on your architecture (32- or 64-bit). You
can also install the RPM with a particular architecture by specifying the appropriate suffix. For example, to install the 64-bit
RPM:
prompt# yum install vfabric-web-server.x86_64
3. Enter y at the prompt to begin the actual installation.
If the installation is successful, you will see a Complete! message at the end.
The yum command:
VMware vFabric Cloud Application
Platform 5.0 5
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