Deploy separate Web Preview servlets

The Web Preview functionality of Acronis Access allows users to view file contents without having to download the whole file. With a lot of users, this can slow down your deployment's performance. To counter this, you can setup additional servlets that can handle the web previewing and assist your main server(s).

Installing and configuring the servlet

Tomcat Installation

Note: Each Tomcat instance can only service a single preview request at a time. LibreOffice's code prevents multiple instances from running on the same machine, so in order to scale out you will need to install multiple virtual machines, each with one Tomcat instance running the Acronis Access servlet.

1. Install a 64bit version of LibreOffice. For detailed information, please read their official documentation at: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/install-howto
2. Make sure you have a 64bit Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version installed. A 64bit Java Development Kit (JDK) will also work.
3. Install a 64bit version of Apache Tomcat 7. Make sure the version you install is not newer than the one supported by Acronis Access. The version used by Acronis Access is listed in the What's New section.
4. Navigate to the folder where you installed Apache Tomcat.
5. Navigate to the bin folder and open startup.bat with a text editing program.
6. Find the line setlocal and add the following lines below it:
   • set CATALINA_HOME="Your Tomcat Folder"
     e.g. CATALINA_HOME="C:\Program Files\Apache7"
     This sets the default Tomcat folder for all settings.
   • set JRE_HOME="Java main folder location"
     e.g. JRE_HOME="C:\Java"
     This sets the default JRE folder for all settings.

     Note: If you're using a JDK, the command is JAVA_HOME instead of JRE_HOME.

   • set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xmx1024M -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 "-Djava.library.path=%CATALINA_HOME%\bin;C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 5\program"
     This allows Tomcat to use LibreOffice's libraries.
7. Navigate to your Acronis Access installation folder (by default C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\Access\Access Server\).
8. Copy the AccessPreviewServlet folder to your Servlet Tomcat's webapps folder.
9. Navigate to C:\Software\Apache7\conf and edit the server.xml file. Find the lines: <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" and unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"> and place the following right under them:

   <!-- for Access Web preview -->

   <Context path="/AccessPreviewServlet" docBase="C:\Program Files\Apache7\webapps\AccessPreviewServlet">

   <Loader className="org.apache.catalina.loader.VirtualWebappLoader"

   virtualClasspath="C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 5\program\classes\*.jar" />

   </Context>

Access Server Configurations

1. Open the Acronis Access web interface and open General Settings -> Web Previews.
2. Enable Use custom URL for web preview service and enter the address for your new web preview servlet. (e.g. http://accesswp.company.com). If you're using a clustered setup, the URL will be the address of the loadbalancer.