Instances and Web Sites

Even though Sun WebServer 1.0 was able to support multiple instances of the HTTP server running concurrently, starting, stopping, and restarting the server worked best with a single instance of the HTTP daemon. Sun WebServer 2.1 improves support for multiple instances by providing each httpd daemon on the system with a unique name. One is able to start, stop, and restart individual instances by using their names. See the man page htserver(1m) for more information.

Sun WebServer 2.1 has also expanded support of virtual hosts. Each virtual host is now associated with a web site and given its own subtree in the file system, which contains the configuration files for that host as well as the host's document root. While Sun WebServer 1.0 maintained all configuration information for a virtual host in the global configuration file httpd.conf, Sun WebServer 2.1 stores most of this information in a site configuration file located relative to the root of the web site. Placing most of the site-specific configuration information at the web site rather than in a single file makes Sun WebServer 2.1 more scalable than Sun WebServer 1.0 and simplifies the administration of individual web sites.