Since the GA of the Tcat Server product, the development team has been working on the next version of the product. During this time, we also participated at Oracle OpenWorld, and got to meet over 2,000 people who previewed the Tcat Server – it was great hearing from them that the product is very easy to use and is highly useful for organizations using Tomcat.
Here are the things we are currently working on and will preview them to you in few weeks time:
1. Configuration Management – We will be provide the ability to manage the configuration of Tomcat instances and the JVM on which the instance is running. This allows you to remotely manage the configuration of one or more Tomcat servers from a central console. For example, if you find that your newly deployed applications require more heap space than originally configured, you would be able to make that change on a remote server from the console. Another example is you find that server.xml needs to be modified for a web app to function properly. With Tcat Server you will be able to view current server.xml , modify its content and publish it to a server or several servers at once.
Why is this important? With these capabilities, Tcat Server can help developers and administrators eliminate the tedious and error-prone task of modifying configuration individually for each instance of Tomcat. This way, administrators can ensure that applications can be deployed in a “first-time-right” fashion to properly configured servers, minimizing failures.
2. Reliable Server Restarts – once you make a configuration change that requires restart of the Tomcat instance, with Tcat Server you will be able to restart the instance directly from the console.
3. API access to server management and deployment actions – currently with Tcat Server, you can use AdminShell to do actions such as auto redeploy of a WAR file based on an upload event. We have on our roadmap to provide an API that can be used from outside the console to invoke server management and deployment actions.
Why is this important? This capability can introduce an additional level of automation, saving administrators time and allowing them to focus on more important tasks. For example, as part of your operational processes, you may need to schedule deployment of new applications only during a maintenance window and it happens to be on Saturday night. You would be able to use the API from your scheduler program to kick off deploy/redeploy of the applications and also if required make configuration changes and do a restart of the server.
We have lot more ideas that we will be spending time on over next few weeks, but, would like to hear from you on the features that you would like to see in Tcat Server. Send us an email at tcat at mulesoft dot com.
