We work with IBM products and we typically use IBM Http Servers (read Apache) as a reverse proxy for our application servers. For performance reasons we serve static content (.gif, .jpg, .css, .html etc.) from our http servers, to ease the burden a bit from the application server.

So far, we have to distribute files to http server and configure it manually (writing custom scripts at best.) The problem is the effort needed to keep everything in synch, especially when you need to update the app.

Does any Java EE product support this “out of the box”? Is there a way to have application server do this automatically, like in cluster configuration for example, where master node is in charge of distributing the application to other nodes and for keeping everything in synch.