Jazz Library Tip: Hide port numbers from the public server URI
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clm,elm

Wed, 11 Jul 2012
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Tip: Hide port numbers from the public server URI

Stephane Leroy: Jazz Jumpstart Team
Last updated: January 17, 2012
Build basis: Collaborative Lifecycle Management 3.0.1

Note:This article is outdated and is replaced by Creating a Reverse Proxy Server with WebSphere Plugins in the Deployment wiki. In the future, all deployment guidance and best practices will be published in the Deployment wiki rather than as Jazz.net articles.

This article provides tips for administrators who wish to specify a public server URI without a port number during initial configuration of the Jazz server. It covers both Tomcat and WebSphere server configurations.

Table of contents

Hide port numbers from the public server URI For more information
About the author

Hide port numbers from the public server URI

For easier user access or administrative purposes, you may want the CLM2011 applications to respond to URLs without a port number.

For example :

https://clm.example.org/jts instead of https://clm.example.org:9443/jts
or
https://ccm.example.org/ccm instead of https://ccm.example.org:9443/ccm
https://qm.example.org/qm instead of https://qm.example.org:9443/qm
https://rm.example.org/rm instead of https://rm.example.org:9443/rm

Reminders

  1. By default :
  • web servers use port 80 for non-secure communications over HTTP, and port 443 for secure communications over HTTPS.
  • web browsers can access HTTP(S) servers configured this way without having to include the port number in the URL.
  1. Once you have set the public URI for your applications, it cannot be changed. For more information, see Planning your URIs.

Procedure for a Tomcat server

  1. In a text editor, open JazzInstallDir/server/tomcat/conf/server.xml.
  2. Search for the <Connector> element for the non-secure port. By default, this <Connector> element is not commented out. There is a comment above it that says <!– Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 9080 –> and it has a redirectPort attribute.
  3. Modify the value of the port attribute with port number 80 to use for non-secure connections.
  4. After you have modified the <Connector> for the non-secure port, search for the <Connector> element for the secure port. By default, this <Connector> element is not commented out and has the attribute secure=”true”.
  5. Modify the value of the port attribute with the port number 443 to use for secure connections.
  6. Save the server.xml file.
  7. Start the application server.

The resulting server.xml file should look like this:

<!– Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 80 –>
<Connector port=”80″
….
redirectPort=”443″
….
…./>
<!– Define a SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 443 –>
<Connector port=”443″
….
….
….
scheme=”https”
secure=”true”
….
…./>
….

Procedure for a WebSphere Application Server

  1. Start the application server.
  2. Log in to the Integrated Solutions Console as an application server administrator.
  3. Click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere Application Servers > server_name > Ports.
  4. Modify the value for WC_defaulthost with port number 80 to use for non-secure, HTTP connections. Make sure this value is not used already.
  5. Modify the value for WC_defaulthost_secure with port number 443 to use for secure, HTTPS connections. Make sure this value is not used already.
  6. Click Apply, then click Save directly to the master configuration. As a result, Ports should now look like this:

  1. Stop and restart the application server.

Next Step: Configure the Jazz Team Server

You can now use the setup wizard to configure the Jazz Team Server. Please make sure you use the public URL with no port.

For more information, see Running the setup wizard.

N.B. (for Linux users: all ports below 1024 are “privileged” ports (only root may open a privileged port).

General Notes

Here, the assumption is made that ports 80 and 443 are available on the machine. This might not be the case:

  • if another server is using one of these ports, or
  • if your CLM applications (JTS, CCM, QM and/or RM) are running on different servers but are at least partly co-located on the same machines.

As mentioned in the Summary, only an initial configuration of the Jazz server was considered in this article.

If you must change the port number your Jazz server is responding on, while also maintaining URL stability, consider using a reverse proxy to route requests using the old port number to the appropriate new location.

For more information

  1. Moving Jazz Servers and URI Stability with CLM 2011
  2. Change the default port
  3. WebSphere 7 Information Center
  4. Using virtual host names in your topology
  5. Using a reverse proxy in your topology
  6. Configuring Enterprise CLM Reverse Proxies, Part 1: Understanding Reverse Proxy
  7. Configuring Enterprise CLM Reverse Proxies, Part 2: WebSphere and IHS Plugin method

About the author

Stephane is the Toulouse, France based member ofthe Jazz Jumpstart team which is a worldwide group of development specialists who bring new and advanced Jazz-based technologies to customers.
Please direct feedback and comments to stephane.leroy@fr.ibm.com.

Copyright © 2012 IBM Corporation

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Wed, 11 Jul 2012