Setup Redis as the Session Store for Apache Tomcat 7

Setting up the Redis Server as a session is really advantageous. First, its a NO-SQL database and second its really easy to scale using this. This kind of setup would lead to a clear understanding of how Redis can behave as cache as well as a session storing system. In order to do this the instructions are as follows :-

1. Download Redis and build by the following commands (This includes downloading it too)
   

   wget http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz tar xvzf redis-stable.tar.gz
   cd redis-stable
   make

2. Start Redis using command(Redis Directory refers to the directory where Redis is built)

   cd RedisDirectory/src
   ./redis-server --port 6379

3. Get the latest version of Apache Tomcat 7
4. Download the latest version for JEDIS (A Redis Java Client), Tomcat Redis Session Manager (Redis-backed non-sticky session store for Apache Tomcat) and Apache Commons Pool .
5. Copy all the above files into the lib folder of the Apache Tomcat 7 installation directory.
6. Add the lines mentioned below in the context.xml of your Apache Tomcat 7 (Or on the context block of server.xml if applicable).Edit the Configurations as your settings. In out case the port number to be configured is 6279.

   <Valve className="com.radiadesign.catalina.session.RedisSessionHandlerValve" />
<Manager className="com.radiadesign.catalina.session.RedisSessionManager"
host="localhost" <!-- optional: defaults to "localhost" -->
port="6379" <!-- optional: defaults to "6379" -->
database="0" <!-- optional: defaults to "0" -->
maxInactiveInterval="60" <!-- optional: defaults to "60" (in seconds) --> />

7. Now restart your Apache Tomcat 7 normally and now you would see that the sessions are being created in the Redis Rather than on Tomcat.

Thats it. Now you have your Apache Tomcat 7 storing all the sessions in Redis and it also takes care about the different aspects of sessions.

Image: Courtesy – “Redis”
Thanks to the plugin creator James Coleman. You can find him on Git.
Article can be viewed on my blog at Shiv Ganesh .