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Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server?

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On 6/11/16 12:41 PM, Daniel Pitts wrote:
> On 6/10/16 3:48 PM, Qu0ll wrote:
>> DISCLAIMER: Server-side Java is not my forte.
>>
>> I have often noticed that in many places where I have worked, the
>> companies have both a full application server such as JBoss/Wildfly AND
>> a web server (typically Apache) installed and both seem to work together.
>>
>> 1) Is this necessary and if so, why?
>> 2) What does a web server "provide" that an application server doesn't?
>> 3) What is the nature of the relationship or interaction between both
>> applications?
>>
> It isn't always necessary, but they provide different specializations.
>
> The Apache (or nginx) provides some basic file serving, redirects, URL
> masking, etc...  They also make it easier to serve multiple applications
> behind a single host.
>
> Where I work, we used to have many more layers than even that:
>
>
> 1. Akamai
> 2. Load Balancer
> 3. Apache
> 4. Load Balancer
> 5. Custom Proxy #1 (For non-cachable/real-time decisions)
> 6. Load Balancer
> 7. Caching Proxy
> 8. Load Balancer
> 9. Custom Proxy #2 (For cachable global logic)
> 10. Load Balancer
> 11. Web Application(s)
>
>
> Because we used an HTTP API, it went even deeper.  The "Web Application"
> would call into our API stack:
>
> 1. Load Balancer
> 2. Apache
> 3. Caching Proxy
> 4. HTTP API Application(s)
>
> The API would then connect to MySQL or SOLR (Solr being another
> web-app), and other data-sources.
>
> Could we do all of this in a single application? Yes! But it wouldn't be
> quite as robust, would be harder to manage, and would require us to
> right a lot more custom code to do the functions that Apache did for us.
>
> We've since simplified our architecture a lot (no more custom proxies),
> and use nginx instead of apache.

Oops, I missed two load-balancers in the API stack ;-)  Basically, we 
always had a load balancer between each layer.  We even had a 
load-balancer for MySQL and SOLR query tiers.

So, each request was serviced by a total of at least 17 hops. 19 if you 
count the data source connections.

Now, flat-files (images, javascript, etc...) weren't served by the web 
applications, but instead put on a shared filer that was served directly 
by Apache.  Again, we *could* have done it through the web-app, but that 
would have been a much more complicated web-app.

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Thread

Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Qu0ll <qu0ll64@gmail.com> - 2016-06-11 08:48 +1000
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Kevin McMurtrie <mcmurtrie@pixelmemory.us> - 2016-06-11 00:43 -0700
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-11 12:41 -0700
    Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-11 12:45 -0700
      Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-06-11 17:45 -0400
        Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-06-12 21:05 -0700
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-06-11 17:44 -0400
  Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Qu0ll <qu0ll64@gmail.com> - 2016-06-16 06:58 +1000
    Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2016-07-07 22:31 -0400
      Re: Is it necessary to have both an application server AND a web server? Daniel Pitts <usenet@coloraura.com> - 2016-07-08 08:31 -0700

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