Keep the following in mind before you configure a multi-context Jamf Pro environment:
- URL syntax —
The context name is case-sensitive because file paths are case-sensitive. If capital letters are used in the context name, capital letters must be used in the browser URL to navigate to the site.
The URL is an address to a specific computer. The context name appended to the end of the URL uses the same syntax as a file path. For example, the top level of a Mac has multiple names: slash (or /), Macintosh HD, which is a symlink for /, and root, because / is the root volume. It is understood that all of those names refer to the top of the path.
If the URL (i.e., the hostname of the computer) has no context name appended, Tomcat's default behavior is to route traffic to a webapp called ROOT, which is a folder on the file system where Tomcat is installed. Using only the URL means: "go to the computer at address x running Tomcat and access the web application hosted there called ROOT".
- DataBase.xml —Each context has a unique DataBase.xml file that connects it to its unique database. For more information on troubleshooting issues with these configuration files, see the Troubleshooting Database Connectivity from the Jamf Pro Server article.
- Multi-context logging configuration —To prevent the logs written by multi-context instances of Jamf Pro from overwriting each other because they have the same name, multi-context instances require a separate folder for each instance of the log files. For example:
/var/lib/tomcat/webapps/red/JAMFSoftwareServer.log/var/lib/tomcat/webapps/blue/JAMFSoftwareServer.log
While it is possible to change the log files in the log4j2.xml file, this method has more potential for future issues than creating separate log file folders.
- Manual Installation of components —The Jamf Pro installers install Tomcat and then expand Jamf Pro into the ROOT web application as a single context. Therefore, a multi-context environment indicates that Tomcat and Jamf Pro must be manually installed in addition to Java and MySQL. For more information, see the Installing Java and MySQL for Jamf Pro 10.14.0 or Later article.