Issues with multiple Tomcat 7 services on Windows

[Ra Carter]

I am trying to run multiple tomcat servers on Windows. I have downloaded and installed the tomcat7 zip (not using the installer) to three different folders, and updated the port information so they do not conflict. Everything seems to work fine if I run all three manually using the service.bat script that comes with tomcat.

When executing service.bat manually, I updated the java memory parameters by modifying service.bat as such:

set "JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m"

However strange things happen when I run it as a Windows service. I installed the services with the following commands:

cd C:\tomcat1
bin\service.bat install t1
bin\tomcat7.exe //US//t1 --JvmMs=1024 --JvmMx=2048 --JvmSs=1073152

cd C:\tomcat2
bin\service.bat install t2
bin\tomcat7.exe //US//t2 --JvmMs=1024 --JvmMx=2048 --JvmSs=1073152

cd C:\tomcat1\
bin\service.bat install t3
bin\tomcat7.exe //US//t3 --JvmMs=1024 --JvmMx=2048 --JvmSs=1073152

When running these servers I'll see that my web applications stop responding. I don't see any error messages, it's just very slow to respond, and usually doesn't respond at all. Very strange.

Are there any issues with using tomcat7 services like this? Am I doing something crazy with setting the Jvm params in the service install? Any suggestions for how to find the root cause?

Also, is there any chance that are any conflicts with %CATALINA_HOME%? If so, how can I resolve that?

[Ra Carter]

Just to close the loop on my own thread; the problem was indeed how I configured the additional memory. Apparently --JvmMs, --JvmMx, and --JvmSs parameters to the tomcat7.exe windows service install program were not enough. I had to also specify the --JavaOptions parameters such that I could set the -Xmx and -Xms parameters explicitly.

For example:

set CATALINA_HOME=C:\tomcat
set CATALINA_BASE=%CATALINA_HOME%\t1
%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\service.bat install t1
%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\tomcat7.exe //US//t1 \
    --DisplayName=t1 \
    --Description="Tomcat 7 instance 1" \
    --JvmOptions=-Xms256m;-Xmx1024m;-XX:MaxPermSize=256m;-Dcatalina.base=%CATALINA_BASE%;-Dcatalina.home=%CATALINA_HOME%;-Djava.endorsed.dirs=%CATALINA_HOME%\endorsed;-Djava.io.tmpdir=%CATAlINA_BASE%\temp;-Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager;-Djava.util.logging.config.file=%CATALINA_BASE%\conf\logging.properties \
    --JvmMs=256
    --JvmMx=1024
    --JvmSs=100000

rem repeat for each instance...
rem all that should be on one line

(FYI: I am now using multiple tomcat instances in one single tomcat installation as opposed to several separate installations.)

I'm not exactly sure what the other tomcat7 Jvm parameters are used for. I'm still trying to figure that one out.