can tomcat cluster only leaves one server up, if that server is down, then start the second server?

[Hai Lin]

All,

I am new to Tomcat cluster, so I will greatly appreciate any your help on my questin below.

I want to set up a tomcat cluster including 2 servers, but each time I only want one server is up; if that running server is down, the cluster will automatically start up the second server?

Can tomcat cluster do this? if so, could you tell me any info or link that how to do it?

Many thanks!

[Tim Holloway]

What is the benefit? It takes time to start/stop a Tomcat server. Not much, compared to its bigger relatives, but still it takes time. Keeping both nodes in a cluster alive means millisecond-speed failover instead of tens of seconds or more. And it's not like Tomcat is a major resource hog.