Pivotal tc Server contains all of vanilla Tomcat, and has a few optional extensions designed to make it easier to deploy and maintain. Broken out into three groups, the diff looks like this:
Configuration extensions (No altered code, just config changes we implement)
- Multi-Instance using shared binaries
- Trivial to change Tomcat versions while preserving app and configuration
- Variable Substitution in config files
- Async Logging
- Mild Security Tuning (ports, mgmt apps, JMX)
Code Extensions
- Patch version releases – fix flaws in current release [e.g. tomcat-7.0.32.B.RELEASE]
- Extended JMX interface
- Additional Metrics
- Application Deployment
- Diagnostics Valve - good troubleshooting info when there's a slowdown
- Config Templates – including custom-created
- Change log level on the fly
- Advanced Session replication (Gemfire)
- Oracle DB Connection Proxy
Add-Ons
- Windows Service Wrapper
- RPM / Apt-Get / Debian installers (linux)
- Startup scripts (linux)
- Chef Recipes
- Puppet Scripts
- Password Encryption
- Spring Insight for performance tuning
FYI on the tag thing, there's still the old "springsource-tc-server" tag. SpringSource is now Pivotal. (Can/should we update the tag or add a new one?)
Hope this helps.