Set up Tomcat

Overview

There are numerous client-server and network-based workloads, with Tomcat being a typical example of such applications. Tomcat provides services via HTTP/HTTPS network requests.

In this section, you will set up a benchmark environment using Apache Tomcat and wrk2 to simulate an HTTP load and evaluate performance on an Arm-based bare metal instance. This Learning Path was tested on an AWS c8g.metal-48xl instance.

Set up the Tomcat benchmark server

Apache Tomcat is an open-source Java Servlet container that runs Java web applications, handles HTTP requests, and serves dynamic content. It supports technologies such as Servlet, JSP, and WebSocket.

Install the Java Development Kit (JDK)

Install OpenJDK 21 on your Arm-based Ubuntu 24.04 bare-metal instance:

    

        
        
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y openjdk-21-jdk

    

Install Tomcat

Download and extract Tomcat:

    

        
        
wget -c https://dlcdn.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-11/v11.0.10/bin/apache-tomcat-11.0.10.tar.gz
tar xzf apache-tomcat-11.0.10.tar.gz

    

Alternatively, you can build Tomcat from source .

Enable access to Tomcat examples

To access the built-in examples from your local network or external IP, use a text editor to modify the context.xml file by updating the RemoteAddrValve configuration to allow all IP addresses.

The file is at:

    

        
        
~/apache-tomcat-11.0.10/webapps/examples/META-INF/context.xml

    

Replace the existing allow value as shown:

    

        
        
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+|::1|0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" />

    

With:

    

        
        
<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow=".*" />

    

Save the changes to your file.

Start the Tomcat server

Start the server:

    

        
        
ulimit -n 65535 && ~/apache-tomcat-11.0.10/bin/startup.sh

    

You should see output like:

    

        
        Using CATALINA_BASE:   /home/ubuntu/apache-tomcat-11.0.10
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /home/ubuntu/apache-tomcat-11.0.10
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /home/ubuntu/apache-tomcat-11.0.10/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /usr
Using CLASSPATH:       /home/ubuntu/apache-tomcat-11.0.10/bin/bootstrap.jar:/home/ubuntu/apache-tomcat-11.0.10/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_OPTS:
Tomcat started.

        
    

Confirm server access

In your browser, open: http://${tomcat_ip}:8080/examples.

You should see the Tomcat welcome page and examples, as shown below:

Apache Tomcat homepage

Apache Tomcat examples

Set up the benchmarking client using wrk2

Wrk2 is a high-performance HTTP benchmarking tool specialized in generating constant throughput loads and measuring latency percentiles for web services. wrk2 is an enhanced version of wrk that provides accurate latency statistics under controlled request rates, ideal for performance testing of HTTP servers.

Install dependencies

Install the required packages:

    

        
        
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libssl-dev git zlib1g-dev

    

Clone and build wrk2

Clone the repository and compile the tool:

    

        
        
sudo git clone https://github.com/giltene/wrk2.git
cd wrk2
sudo make

    

Move the binary to a directory in your system’s PATH:

    

        
        
sudo cp wrk /usr/local/bin

    

Run the benchmark

Use the following command to benchmark the HelloWorld servlet running on Tomcat:

    

        
        
ulimit -n 65535 && wrk -c32 -t16 -R50000 -d60 http://${tomcat_ip}:8080/examples/servlets/servlet/HelloWorldExample

    

You should see output similar to:

    

        
        
Running 1m test @ http://172.31.46.193:8080/examples/servlets/servlet/HelloWorldExample
  16 threads and 32 connections
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.381ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.626ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.020ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.578ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.166ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.275ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.454ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.655ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.334ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.089ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.365ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.382ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.342ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.349ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.023ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread calibration: mean lat.: 3.275ms, rate sampling interval: 10ms
  Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
    Latency     1.02ms  398.88us   4.24ms   66.77%
    Req/Sec     3.30k   210.16     4.44k    70.04%
  2999776 requests in 1.00m, 1.56GB read
Requests/sec:  49996.87
Transfer/sec:     26.57MB