I would like to setup mod_security as a stand alone instance protecting Tomcat instances against web application attacks. Would anyone know the pros and cons of doing this via installing mod_security as an Apache module versus installing mod_security on a reverse proxy? Has anyone implemented mod_security in either of these fashions? And if so is one preferred over the other?
There's really no difference in your two options. What non reverse proxy would you install the module on to protect Tomcat?
The question doesn't really make sense as they are both the same to you.
If you already have an Apache server, then you install ModSecurity in one of two ways:
In embedded mode by installing ModSecurity as module in the existing Apache instance you already have. The advantages are that you won't have to set up a separate Apache instance, and that the ModSecurity will have access to the environment that Apache runs under (so can see environment variables for example or log to same log files).
In a reverse proxy mode. This involves setting up a separate Apache instance, with ModSecurity on it only, and funnel all requests through it, before sending on the requests to your normal Apache. The advantages here are a dedicated web server just for ModSecurity, so you will not share resources with your existing version of Apache, if it is already resource hungry. Disadvantages are that it doubles your infrastructure and the complications that brings.
Personally I prefer option 1.
However, as you want to set up a dedicated web server in front of TomCat, the two options are identical for you. The new instance of Apache (or Nginx) that you set up will be running it in embedded mode and will act as a reverse proxy to your Tomcat server.
Personally I always think it's best to run a dedicated web server like Apache in front of any app server like Tomcat - especially on a public facing website. Granted Tomcat does include a pretty good web server (called Coyote), which may serve most of your web server needs, but a dedicated web server like Apache is more geared towards serving static content and contains other features for performance and security which make it a better end point server (including the ability to run ModSecurity for example!).
And just in case there is any confusion, Apache is actually short for Apache HTTP Server, and is sometimes called Apache httpd after the process that it runs. It is Apache's most popular bit of software hence why the name gets shortened, but Apache actually have lots of bits of software (including Apache Tomcat - usually shortened just to Tomcat).
Related
I'm trying to set up Apache in front of Tomcat. What do I have Apache serve? I know Apache works better for static pages and images. I currently deploy a war file in Tomcat that contains static pages, images, and Flash files. Should I put those all on the Apache server? How to I reference those pages/images from the Tomcat application?
I would like to use Apache to decrease the war file size and hopefully serve images faster. Is there a good guide for setting up Apache and Tomcat and what to place where?
Do you have a problem with performance/load on your Tomcat server? Do it if you need to(performance, security, etc), but don't make things more complicated if you don't need to.
It used to be the standard to front Tomcat with an Apache server, but recent versions of Tomcat can(and often times are) used as both the HTTP Server and the Servlet Container.
Take a look at the Tomcat Connector FAQ for information on the subject.
Why should I integrate Apache with
Tomcat? (or not)
There are many reasons to integrate
Tomcat with Apache. And there are
reasons why it should not be done too.
Needless to say, everyone will
disagree with the opinions here. With
the performance of Tomcat 5 and 6,
performance reasons become harder to
justify.
...
Speed. Apache is faster at serving
static content than Tomcat. But unless
you have a high traffic site, this
point is useless. But in some
scenarios, tomcat can be faster than
Apache httpd. So benchmark YOUR site.
Tomcat can perform at httpd speeds
when using the proper connector (APR
with sendFile enabled). Speed should
not be considered a factor when
choosing between Apache httpd and
Tomcat
I'm trying to set up Apache in front of Tomcat. What do I have Apache serve? I know Apache works better for static pages and images. I currently deploy a war file in Tomcat that contains static pages, images, and Flash files. Should I put those all on the Apache server? How to I reference those pages/images from the Tomcat application?
I would like to use Apache to decrease the war file size and hopefully serve images faster. Is there a good guide for setting up Apache and Tomcat and what to place where?
Do you have a problem with performance/load on your Tomcat server? Do it if you need to(performance, security, etc), but don't make things more complicated if you don't need to.
It used to be the standard to front Tomcat with an Apache server, but recent versions of Tomcat can(and often times are) used as both the HTTP Server and the Servlet Container.
Take a look at the Tomcat Connector FAQ for information on the subject.
Why should I integrate Apache with
Tomcat? (or not)
There are many reasons to integrate
Tomcat with Apache. And there are
reasons why it should not be done too.
Needless to say, everyone will
disagree with the opinions here. With
the performance of Tomcat 5 and 6,
performance reasons become harder to
justify.
...
Speed. Apache is faster at serving
static content than Tomcat. But unless
you have a high traffic site, this
point is useless. But in some
scenarios, tomcat can be faster than
Apache httpd. So benchmark YOUR site.
Tomcat can perform at httpd speeds
when using the proper connector (APR
with sendFile enabled). Speed should
not be considered a factor when
choosing between Apache httpd and
Tomcat
I've been trying to mug up on Glassfish and one thing that keeps coming up is the "how-to" on fronting Glassfish with Apache. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a description of why you would want to do this!
From my experimentation, Glassfish seems like a pretty fully featured web server-type service; but I might be missing a lot. So, is the notion of front-ending Glassfish more of a solution to integrate it with an existing architecture, or does front-ending (in a pure Java environment) provide extra benefits?
There's also another valid use case as to why we front Glassfish with Apache. Apache in this instance would function as a reverse proxy for increased security of your Glassfish. The RP is configured to allow only certain URLs to be passed through to the application server. For e.g., you may have app contexts /myApp and /myPrivApp deployed in Glassfish. In the RP server, you only configure /myApp to be passed to Glassfish. Anybody requesting for /myPrivApp would see a 404 'cos the request stops right at the RP level.
In one of my deployments, I have a bunch of WARs deployed, some for users coming from the internet, some for intranet only. I have 2 RPs running, one for internet users and the other for intranet. I configure the internet RP to only allow URLs for approved internet applications to pass through while intranet users get to see everything.
Hope that helps.
It is usually used to speed things up. Since apache is a very fast web server it is used to deliver static content. Like images, CSS files and so on. Glassfish serves the dynamic content (servlets, JSPs) in this scenario.
Another reason for using Apache as a frontend to Glassfish is the possibility to provide load balancing across a Glassfish cluster. See http://tiainen.sertik.net/2011/03/load-balancing-with-glassfish-31-and.html for details.
A other reason is that glassfish cannot run (easily) on port 80, without giving it root rights of course.
So, for most users it's easer to run a proxy (apache, nginx, varnish) some sort in front of apache and have both servers run under a normal user.
Then you have a other advantage of some configurations options of your front end. Like others mentioned, caching for example.
Recently our Software Analytic provider (NETTRACKER) sent us a plugin in order to be able to capture visitors in a better way. This plugin is for Apache 1.x and Apache 2.x. They said and I quote
that since Apache Tomcat is built on Apache HTTP server the configuration of the plugin should be the same.
I have looked for a httpd.conf in our tomcat deployment but we cannot find one, the only configuration that is similar to that one is the server.xml under the /conf directory.
If someone has better information regarding these two incredible products (Apache HTTP server and Apache Tomcat) I will greatly appreciate to draw the differences.
EDIT:
In case you are curious we know that Apache Web Server and Tomcat can work together using the mod_jk option and other proxys. But this will be too complex for our deployment.
Apache Tomcat and Apache HTTP are completely different server technologies. It is impossible to use a plugin for Apache HTTP server with Tomcat.
Apache HTTP server is developed in C and so are the plug-ins. On the contrary Tomcat is now completely developed in Java. Tomcat doesn't only serve static content, but it can also serve JSP pages and servlets.
Tomcat is used for hosting Java Web Applications. It can sure serve static content - you can host a web application using only Tomcat. Secure connections are supported and the performance is also very good (comparable with the performance of HTTP server).
A plain installation of Apache serves static content. Using the appropriate plug-ins, HTTP requests can be redirected to an application server (Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish) or a script language interpreter (PHP). With this way dynamic content can be generated. The big advantages of Apache are the numerous plug-ins available, which allows administrators to configure and monitor web sites any way they want and that is the most widespread server available. This makes it the most secure solution, since it is thoroughly tested and any discovered flaw is corrected very quickly.
The best solution would be to use Tomcat proxied by an Apache server. It isn't so difficult to set up. If you can't do this, then you can't take advantage of Apache's plug-ins.
You see this confusion all the time. Many people think that Apache is a web server where in reality it is the name of an organization that has a web server project called "The Apache HTTP Server Project". In short the web server is called HTTPD (D as in daemon or Unix process).
Tomcat is another Apache project. This project implements a Java servlet engine to serve JSP pages and servlets. Tomcat and HTTPD have nothing to do with each other. However, you can set up HTTPD and Tomcat so that they work together. This way you can have HTTPD serve all static content, do URL rewriting and much more fancy stuff that the built in Tomcat web server can't do (or can't do very well). Whenever a JSP page is requested, HTTPD will pass the request on to Tomcat. Tomcat will process the request and will hand the output back to HTTPD which in turn will send it to the client.
Apache has many interesting projects. E.g. there is also a project called Geronimo which is a Java Enterprise server (J2EE). You can e.g. choose to embed Tomcat inside Geronimo to handle requests for JSP's and servlets where Geronimo does the more enterprisy stuff (LDAP, Messaging etc.). And you guessed it probably already, you can use HTTPD as a static content server for Geronimo as well.
totally bogus. Apache httpd plugins are written in C, Tomcat is pure Java.
Tomcat is a Java servlet engine. It can be hosted under Apache or IIS or quite a number of other external facing web servers. It sounds like you may be currently running your Tomcat instance standalone...
If you serve the JSP/servlets off of port 8080 and have it do things standalone, on the same host machine that Apache is running on, this can allow you to have them loosely coupled. Having multiple web servers fielding independent requests is not recommended, especially if you want to use server-based authentication along with Apache. Typically, you have one outside facing server that shepherds everything through it... Apache does this quite well, and the plugin you mention probably relies on this type of setup (everything gets wired through Apache) for its features/capabilities, based on your brief description of it.
If you would like to serve up your Tomcat servlets under Apache, you could configure apache to forward a class of URIs to your tomcat server instances. you could achieve this type of forwarding through mod_rewrite. this is a slower option performance-wise, as it adds slight overhead on everything you server up. You could also proxy incoming requests via a CGI mechanism similarly, from Apache to Tomcat.
mod_jk will simplify deployment and increase performance for placing Tomcat into an Apache server config. It is pretty painless to configure if you follow the docs, so I am not sure what you mean by "too complex" for your deployment -- if you want Apache and have Tomcat already, it would seem only a matter of slight config changes to get mod_jk downloaded and installed.
I have been looking around to figure out how to configure Glassfish front ended with Apache. And most of the tutorials using the load balancing plug in is making me enable SSL on Apache. I am trying to understand the connection. I should be able to do non SSL communications when I dont have a need for SSL.
There are several blog posts showing how you can use Apache in front of Glassfish. There are several options and depending on your needs, different strategies might be the most appropriate.
I've used Apache with mod_jk which forwards requests to Glassfish - both https and regular http. Lots of good references here.
It's possible to use other modules in Apache also like mod_proxy, but again the requirements you have will flesh out the most appropriate.
Glassfish also have pretty good http engine inside of it where you can configure virtual hosts like in apache. If the load on the Glassfish server isn't to big, you might consider just using Glassfish without anything in front of it.
You can also use the Sun Java System Web Server SJSWS instead of Apache. Despite it's atrocious name, it is just Sun's web server (free to use). It can be used as a reverse proxy (PDF). The SJWS/Glassfish combination is presumably tested really well by Sun.