Public healthcare ICT infrastructures frequently integrate legacy and modern components, resulting in layered software stacks and heterogeneous operational environments. Due to regulatory constraints, long procurement cycles, and strict service-availability requirements, system upgrades must be justified by clear performance benefits. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of Apache Tomcat performance across three generations of Oracle Linux (OL6, OL8, OL9) and two Java runtime families (JDK 7 and JDK 17) within LepidaScpA, the regional ICT provider of Emilia-Romagna. Controlled JMeter workloads were executed on Tomcat 7 and Tomcat 10 to isolate the contributions of OS evolution, kernel and glibc improvements, and JVM modernization. Results show that OL9, when combined with JDK 17 and Tomcat 10, achieves up to 30% throughput improvement and 40-50%latency reduction relative to legacy configurations. Even older runtimes benefit from updated kernels, albeit to a lesser extent. The findings underscore the operational value of systematic, evidence-based modernization in public healthcare ICT systems.
Performance Evaluation of Tomcat Across Oracle Linux Versions in a Legacy Environment
Benetti, Elisa;Mazzini, Gianluca
2026
Abstract
Public healthcare ICT infrastructures frequently integrate legacy and modern components, resulting in layered software stacks and heterogeneous operational environments. Due to regulatory constraints, long procurement cycles, and strict service-availability requirements, system upgrades must be justified by clear performance benefits. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of Apache Tomcat performance across three generations of Oracle Linux (OL6, OL8, OL9) and two Java runtime families (JDK 7 and JDK 17) within LepidaScpA, the regional ICT provider of Emilia-Romagna. Controlled JMeter workloads were executed on Tomcat 7 and Tomcat 10 to isolate the contributions of OS evolution, kernel and glibc improvements, and JVM modernization. Results show that OL9, when combined with JDK 17 and Tomcat 10, achieves up to 30% throughput improvement and 40-50%latency reduction relative to legacy configurations. Even older runtimes benefit from updated kernels, albeit to a lesser extent. The findings underscore the operational value of systematic, evidence-based modernization in public healthcare ICT systems.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
