Introducing SpringSource tc Server 2.0 |
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In the very near future, SpringSource tc Server 2.0™ will be released including a new Spring Edition, representing some big changes for the product and a big step ahead for web application development. This also continues SpringSource's commitment to tc Server being a 100% compatible drop-in replacement for Apache Tomcat that provides the best place to build and run your Spring applications and is ideally suited for modern virtual environments.
Based on the Tomcat server that we all know and love, tc Server adds advanced diagnostics, operational management and mission-critical support capabilities. These features dramatically cut costs and complexity while increasing productivity in comparison to traditional Java EE application servers. SpringSource tc Server is now made available in three different editions: the Spring Edition, the Standard Edition and the Developer Edition. These three editions of tc Server ensure easy access for your development team and provide market leading, enterprise class, production capabilities for both Spring and non-Spring based applications.
Spring Edition
The big news around tc Server is the new distribution we're making available in tc Server Spring Edition. The majority of Tomcat applications out there continue to utilize the Spring Framework, and that’s more true for users of tc Server. For Spring applications running in production, the SpringSource tc Server Spring Edition is the best choice. The advantage of the Spring Edition is the inclusion of the instrumented Spring jars that provide reporting and management via Hyperic HQ, including:
- Deep visibility into the health and performance of Spring applications
- Performance and SLA management of Spring applications provides the insight required to ensure application operation
- Automatically monitor application, data access and custom components
- Monitor performance inside of Spring and execute control operations in response to changing execution conditions
- Monitor application server status, health and response times

The Spring Edition builds on top of the new features that have been included in the Standard Edition of tc Server.
Standard Edition
SpringSource tc Server Standard Edition takes a major operational step forward through its integration with the SpringSource Hyperic HQ 4.2 Enterprise monitoring and management system which includes a couple of important enhancements:
- Rich alert definition, workflows, and flexible control actions for dev-ops to proactively manage application issues
- Group availability and event dashboards make it easy to see the problem areas and possible root causes of issues
The tc Server Standard Edition also provides the ability to manage and monitor your tc Server applications from the same dashboard that you use to manage and monitor your distributed data center. This gives you a comprehensive view into your data center and allows you to correlate views over a wide variety of metric data. Below is a screenshot depicting a group of tc Server instances being monitored:

In addition, the tc Server Standard Edition offers a download of just the tc Server Runtime, without the extra add-ons. This allows us to provide the leanest possible package of the runtime container.
Developer Edition
SpringSource tc Server Developer Edition is provided as a free development download of the tc Server Runtime. It includes:
- 100% Apache Tomcat compatibility – use it wherever you use Tomcat
- Built on the latest production ready Apache Tomcat release at its core
- Including bug fixes contributed to the Tomcat project by SpringSource
- Application templating allows you to easily create templates from existing applications which then allow you to easily and quickly spin up new, similar applications in a matter of minutes.
- Spring Insight performance dashboard for extensive awareness when developing web applications. A screenshot of Spring Insight is provided below, but there's no substitute for trying out the real thing with your own webapp. Download the Developer Edition to take it for a spin and see for yourself.


SpringSource tc Server Developer Edition is also bundled within the SpringSource Tool Suite (STS), an Eclipse-based development environment. STS provides visual tools for rapidly building modern applications using Spring, Spring Roo and Groovy/Grails. This allows developers to easily deploy and test their applications with tc Server without leaving STS. Instead of trying to squeeze an image of STS into this blog post, I highly suggest you check out Jon's tc Server and Spring Insight screencast as well as Stefan's Roo, STS and tc Server screencast. These two screencasts really give you a good perspective of these products in action and show how powerful they really are, so be sure to check them out.
The free Developer Edition offers tremendous value to the developer.
Future
We are already deep into planning for the next release of tc Server and we welcome your suggestions via the tc Server Forum . So grab the new version of tc Server and take it for a spin. You won't be disappointed.
Similar Posts
- Introducing tc Server Developer Edition – with Spring Insight
- The cat is out of the bag – tc Server announced
- Spring Insight 1.0.0.M3 Released
- SpringSource tc Server 6.0.20.A Now Available
- Optimising and Tuning Apache Tomcat









sam says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 12:45 pmDoes it support Tomcat 6.0.24 ?
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 1:09 pmSpringSource tc Server 2.0 is based on Apache Tomcat 6.0.25.
Grzegorz Borkowski says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 1:54 pmDoes it meant there will be finally new version of tc Server Dev Edition released, with Spring Insight? The Spring Insight is a great thing, but the first released version ("PREVIEW1") has a nasty bug, which prevents it from being used with RESTful applications. According to Jira https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/INSIGHT-7, it's fixed in PREVIEW2 version, so I've been waiting for several months for the that version to be released, but still there is only PREVIEW1 available on download page… Any hope to see the patched version soon?
Christian Dupuis (blog author) says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 2:33 pmGrzegorz, STS 2.3.1 will contain an updated version of tc Server Dev Edition with Spring Insight 1.0.0.M2. This version should contain your fix.
STS 2.3.1 will become available for download today.
Christian
Jon Travis says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 2:34 pmThe new version of tc Server Dev Edition ships with our M2 version of Spring Insight, which should have your bug fixed. Give it a shot & let us know how it works!
Scott Andrews says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 2:35 pm@Grzegorz
Spring Insight 1.0.0.M2, which contains a fix for that issue, will be included in the Developer Edition of tc Server 2.0. It will also be available within STS 2.3.1. The updated version of STS should be available within the next day or so.
sam says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 5:24 pmis 6.0.25 an official Apache release?
Mike says:
Added on March 10th, 2010 at 10:42 pmWhen do you guys plan to start offering some kind of public roadmap for your products?
Felipe says:
Added on March 12th, 2010 at 10:12 amI am new to tc Server, but I've been developing with Spring for some time now. Is tc Server Developer Edition production ready? Can I deploy my production applications to a tc Server Developer Edition?
Tks
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on March 12th, 2010 at 10:34 am@sam
Apache Tomcat 6.0.25 is a tag at the ASF but it is not an official release yet. The tc Runtime component in tc Server is based on the Apache Tomcat core using the Tomcat subversion tags. This provides a reference point in time so that we can provide SLA guarantees to customers without having to wait for an official Apache Tomcat release which is highly unpredictable.
Let's explore a simple scenario to illustrate this. A customer is running Apache Tomcat 6.0.20, and wants a fix for a specific bug in the 6.0.20 release. At this point, the customer has two choices:
a) Locate the source code for that release, isolate the bug, patch the bug and build their own version of Apache Tomcat. This means that they must now begin an ongoing maintenance cycle for their own custom Tomcat version.
b) Upgrade to the next official release of Apache Tomcat which, in this case, is 6.0.24. Upgrading to Apache Tomcat 6.0.24 means that the scope of testing and the risk of regressions increases significantly. Quite a price to pay to fix a single bug.
In both these scenarios, neither of these options align with the organization's business objectives. Maintaining a custom version of Apache Tomcat is not their core competency. While there are organizations who have had success doing this, they are few and this model does not fit every organization.
If the organization was using the tc Runtime 6.0.20.C, an Apache Tomcat 6.0.20 based component, the organization could choose to upgrade to 6.0.20.D which has the included and tested fix without accepting the other risks.
One of the benefits of tc Server is the way upgrading of the tc Runtime has been modeled. Customers are never forced down a certain upgrade path, and can run multiple versions in parallel with an easy way to upgrade, and potentially downgrade/rollback if necessary.
When an official release of Apache Tomcat comes out, we don't simply take that release as is, untested and hand it to our customers. If we did, then we would not be providing the customer much value or have the ability to guarantee SLAs. This would not allow for the flexibility to utilize different versions of the tc Runtime. When a new version of Apache Tomcat is official, we put it through our testing process before it is handed to our customers.
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on March 12th, 2010 at 6:34 pm@Mike
The roadmaps for our open source products are already publicly available. For our commercial products, the roadmaps are not publicly available but at our SpringOne shows and our tc Server seminars, we often talk more about the roadmaps there.
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on March 12th, 2010 at 6:37 pm@Felipe
The tc Server Developer Edition is not meant to be deployed to production systems at all. The tools in the Developer Edition are geared specifically for development purposes only. If you want to deploy something to production systems, then you should look at the Spring Edition or the Standard Edition depending on your needs.
Grzegorz Borkowski says:
Added on April 27th, 2010 at 8:18 amBruce, you said tc server 2.0 is based on Tomcat "6.0.25", but in fact under STS directory I see "tc-server-6.0.20.C" – so it looks more like 6.0.20. I'm asking, because Tomcat 6.0.24 introduced the "org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener", which provides fantastic fix for PermGenSpace problems. Finally, developing on Tomcat is not a nightmare of constant memory leak. So it seems to me, that it would be really really beneficial to have tc Server Dev Edition based on tomcat version with this fix included. So in this context Tomcat 6.0.20 and 6.0.2(4|5|6) makes big difference.
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on April 27th, 2010 at 9:27 amSTS has not yet updated the version of tc Server that it distributes. The work around until it is updated is to download tc Server 2.0 manually and then point STS at that version. Here are the steps:
1) Click the New button in the upper left-hand corner
Now click the 'Add…' link
2) In the filter field, type 'server'
3) Select 'Server' and click Next
4) In the 'Define a New Server' screen, click the 'Configure runtime environments…' link
5) Select the old tc Server runtime environment and click the Remove button
6) Click OK
7) In the 'Select a server type' field, locate 'SpringSource tc Server 6.0'. Select it
9) Using the browse button, point to the installation directory of tc Server and click Finish
10) Click Finish on the 'Define a New Server' screen
11) Now bring up the Servers view by going to Window -> Show View -> Servers
12) Select tc Server and click the green play button to start it up
After following these steps, tc Server started up successfully inside of STS and I am able to deploy WARs to it.
MAB911 says:
Added on August 24th, 2010 at 4:11 amwhen will the tc server developer addition be available i want to utilize it in my project..!!!
Bruce Snyder (blog author) says:
Added on August 26th, 2010 at 12:07 pm@MAB911 SpringSource tc Server was released shortly after this blog post went live back in March. For more info about tc Server, please see the product page on the SpringSource website:
http://www.springsource.com/products/tcserver
CAT 40 Tool Holders says:
Added on March 3rd, 2011 at 2:06 pmAs an application server does tomcat sit between the operating system and the application or elsewhere?
We're currently looking into machine tool applications for auto's
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Added on March 13th, 2011 at 11:30 pmwhen will the tc server developer addition be available i want to utilize it in my project..!
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Omar Bob says:
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