What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the server instance from my Tomcat installation?
The main advantage of using the server instance from your Tomcat installation is that you can run the same server outside of Eclipse that you run inside of Eclipse. In addition, the web applications that come standard with Tomcat are present automatically. The main disadvantage with this configuration is that the Tomcat server in Eclipse, in a sense, owns the Tomcat installation. The files found in the associated subfolder under the Servers project in your workspace become the master versions of these Tomcat configuration files. Each time you start this Tomcat server in Eclipse, those files will overwrite the corresponding files in the Tomcat installation. Any changes made locally to those files in the installation would be lost. This implies there will be problems trying to make permanent changes to the Tomcat server using the Manager or Admin Web applications available for Tomcat. An additional disadvantage is that any custom options added to the Tomcat server’s launch configuration
