Multiple Tomcat 8 Installs or Virtual Hosting

Question

In the past when a new webapp or set of services was to be deployed, it was common practice to be given a new vm with tomcat installed on to deploy to. With my current position the client is only giving me one linux instance to deploy several webapps to. (Small internal usage, 0 scaling. Deploying to a single AWS EC2 linux machine)

The applications are required to be given unique domains. ie app1 and app2 could be mapped to smallapp1.com:8080/app1/login and smallerapp2.com:8080/app2/login (ports are for example only and not a requirement)

I currently have two installations of tomcat8 running on the instance and each application is deployed to a unique tomcat install and running on different ports. (one is 8080 and the other 8081).

If I were to want to deploy a handful of other small applications would I be better off using individual tomcat installations or should I be using Virtual Hosting?

I am new to deployment. In the past I was handed a deployment destination and procedure. In the new position I was simply given credentials to a single instance. I am not sure what is better practice or in which situation which is better than another. If it matters, each application is only ever going to be used by a maximum of 20 users at the same time.

TL;DR Using multiple installations of tomcat on the same instance or using the same tomcat installation to host multiple applications.

Answer 1

Virtualhosts is a better option because you are not bloating the server with several installations that could conflict with each other, and you are to take 1 port for each instance of tomcat.

Keep in mind that tomcat is a better solution for Java web applications, if you are not running servlets or JSPs you are better off using Apache Http server.