Tomcat Gets Smarter

MuleSoft is unveiling what it is positioning as a major upgrade to its Tcat Server enterprise-class Web application server.

Improvements to the Apache Tomcat-based Tcat Server R 64 include real-time administrative dashboards and intelligent alerting and monitoring features, as well as security enhancements.

Tcat Server is aimed at filling gaps in traditional Tomcat deployments, such as performance monitoring and diagnostics, application deployment, and server and configuration management. To this end, MuleSoft has added user-configurable alerts based on the monitoring of web application performance statistics and log files. Alerts can be delivered by e-mail, on mobile devices or SNMP traps, which MuleSoft says enables the proactive management of potential risks.

In addition, configurable and customizable dashboards are designed to give administrators global and server-level views of server health and system metrics, deployment status of applications, and raised alerts. And security has been enhanced with access-control capabilities that allow administrators to segment users into role-based groups and control their access to server information and ability to take various actions.

Tcat Server is based totally on the Apache Tomcat binaries, with no changes to the core code. One of the key markets MuleSoft is targeting with this upgraded product are enterprises running on legacy proprietary platforms such as Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere to Tomcat, which is open source. It's also promoted by MuleSoft as being more “lightweight” than traditional Web application platforms from major enterprise vendors.

Tcat Server 6 R4 is immediately available, and is free to use in development and pre-production environments. Production subscriptions start at $595 per CPU per year.