Everyone hates slow websites; web maps are no exception. Your users will look for a nice user experience with the map promptly reacting to their input.
Speed is not the only factor you need to take into account. As a user you will be expect that the site is usually available; frequent downtime will make your users go away to some other website.
In this chapter we will cover the configuration of GeoServer to optimize its speed and availability. We have already learned how to cache layers for optimizing the map speed using GWC. It is a great tool and proper configuration can boost your map's performances. However, caching is not always feasible, such as in cases of frequently changing data, hence GeoServer offers you other tools to increase performance.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics in detail:
Optimizing runtime parameters for JVM
Improving image manipulation performance using JAI
Using a proxy
Creating a GeoServer cluster...