Application Virtual Hosts

Virtual Host

If you ever need to deploy multiple applications on the same Jboss AS instance under the same context root (see below example), this can only be achieved using virtual hosts.

/myapp

The idea is very similar to the Apache setup where a particular site listens on a particaly Domain Name. Under Jboss, a application is listening under a particular domain. This allows you to have the following:

www.mydomainONE.com/myapp
www.mydomainTWO.com/myapp

Even if "myapp" is the same application, it can run under different domains for different clients.

You can also run the application under the root "/" context of the domain.

To achieve this you need to edit two files (NOTE The following configuration was done Jboss AS 4.2.3)

jboss-web.xml (This would be inside your application WAR file under the WEB-INF directory).
{code}/opt/jboss/server/<instance>/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml (Note <instance> represents you instance)

Inside your "jboss-web.xml" you need to define your virtual host and context

<jboss-web>
    <context-root>/myapp</context-root>
    <virtual-host>www.mydomainTWO.com</virtual-host>
</jboss-web>

You now need to edit the server.xml file for you Jboss webcontainer (Tomcat). Inside the <Engine> Tags you need to define you virtual host.

<Host name="www.mydomainTWO.com" autoDeploy="false" deployOnStartup="false" deployXML="false">
     <Alias>www.mydomainTWO.com</Alias>
</Host>

Once you have done this, you can restart the Jboss server and deploy you applications.