Apache Tomcat vs Websphere Liberty

Overview

Apache Tomcat

Stacks16.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes201

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks5.3K

Websphere Liberty

Stacks39

Followers93

Votes0

Apache Tomcat vs Websphere Liberty: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache Tomcat and Websphere Liberty are both Java-based web application servers commonly used for hosting Java web applications. However, there are key differences between the two that make them suitable for different use cases and environments.

Architecture: Apache Tomcat follows a simplistic architecture and is designed to be a lightweight server purely for hosting Java web applications. On the other hand, Websphere Liberty is a full-fledged application server that supports not only Java applications but also other programming languages and provides additional enterprise features such as clustering, high availability, and load balancing.
Open Source vs Commercial: Apache Tomcat is an open-source server, meaning it is freely available for use and can be customized as per specific requirements. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, is a commercial product from IBM that requires a license for usage, and additional features may also require separate licensing. The commercial nature of Websphere Liberty provides enterprise-level support and features as compared to Apache Tomcat.
Startup Time: Apache Tomcat has a faster startup time compared to Websphere Liberty. This is because Tomcat only loads the necessary components at startup, making it suitable for development and testing environments where frequent restarts are required. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, has a longer startup time as it loads a larger set of components to provide a complete application server environment.
Ease of Configuration: Apache Tomcat offers a simpler and straightforward configuration process. It uses a simple XML-based configuration file that can be easily understood and modified. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, comes with a more complex and feature-rich configuration system, providing more options and flexibility but requiring a steeper learning curve.
Runtime Memory Requirements: Apache Tomcat generally requires lesser memory as compared to Websphere Liberty. Tomcat's lightweight nature and focused use case make it more suitable for environments with limited resources or when running on lower-spec hardware. Websphere Liberty, being a full application server, has a larger memory footprint to accommodate the additional enterprise features it provides.
Community Support and Ecosystem: Apache Tomcat has a larger and more active open-source community, providing excellent support, frequent updates, and a large ecosystem of plugins and libraries. Websphere Liberty, being a commercial product, has a smaller community but offers professional support from IBM, making it a preferred choice for enterprise-level deployments and organizations requiring strong vendor support.

In summary, Apache Tomcat is a lightweight, open-source web server primarily focused on hosting Java web applications with faster startup time, simpler configuration, and a larger open-source community. Websphere Liberty, a commercial application server, offers additional enterprise features, support for multiple programming languages, and stronger vendor support. It is suitable for enterprise-level deployments with higher memory requirements and more complex configuration needs.

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Advice on Apache Tomcat, Websphere Liberty

Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
Install apache and tomcat.
Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
Create users on RHEL for application support team.
other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache Tomcat	Websphere Liberty
Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.	It is very lightweight profile of WebSphere Application Server. It is a flexible and dynamic profile of WAS which enables the WAS server to deploy only required custom features instead of deploying a big set of available JEE components.
-	lightweight profile; deploy only required custom features
Statistics
GitHub Stars 8.0K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 5.3K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 16.9K	Stacks 39
Followers 12.6K	Followers 93
Votes 201	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 79 Easy 72 Java 49 Popular 1 Spring web Cons 3 Blocking - each http request block a thread 2 Easy to set up	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Docker Chef Jenkins

What are some alternatives to Apache Tomcat, Websphere Liberty?

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

Related Comparisons

Apache Tomcat vs Websphere Liberty: What are the differences?

Introduction

Architecture: Apache Tomcat follows a simplistic architecture and is designed to be a lightweight server purely for hosting Java web applications. On the other hand, Websphere Liberty is a full-fledged application server that supports not only Java applications but also other programming languages and provides additional enterprise features such as clustering, high availability, and load balancing.
Open Source vs Commercial: Apache Tomcat is an open-source server, meaning it is freely available for use and can be customized as per specific requirements. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, is a commercial product from IBM that requires a license for usage, and additional features may also require separate licensing. The commercial nature of Websphere Liberty provides enterprise-level support and features as compared to Apache Tomcat.
Startup Time: Apache Tomcat has a faster startup time compared to Websphere Liberty. This is because Tomcat only loads the necessary components at startup, making it suitable for development and testing environments where frequent restarts are required. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, has a longer startup time as it loads a larger set of components to provide a complete application server environment.
Ease of Configuration: Apache Tomcat offers a simpler and straightforward configuration process. It uses a simple XML-based configuration file that can be easily understood and modified. Websphere Liberty, on the other hand, comes with a more complex and feature-rich configuration system, providing more options and flexibility but requiring a steeper learning curve.
Runtime Memory Requirements: Apache Tomcat generally requires lesser memory as compared to Websphere Liberty. Tomcat's lightweight nature and focused use case make it more suitable for environments with limited resources or when running on lower-spec hardware. Websphere Liberty, being a full application server, has a larger memory footprint to accommodate the additional enterprise features it provides.
Community Support and Ecosystem: Apache Tomcat has a larger and more active open-source community, providing excellent support, frequent updates, and a large ecosystem of plugins and libraries. Websphere Liberty, being a commercial product, has a smaller community but offers professional support from IBM, making it a preferred choice for enterprise-level deployments and organizations requiring strong vendor support.

Apache Tomcat vs Websphere Liberty

Overview