[WEB400] Multiple web instances assistance and comments

["Steve McKay" <steve.mckay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We are currently running approximately 8 different web applications under
one instance of the original HTTP server and are looking at separating the
applications so that we 2 apps running on 4 Apache instances.  We know that
we can run multiple instances listening on different ports but this presents
certain irritations (port numbers imbedded in URLs, etc.) so we have these
questions:

Can we run 4 separate instances (each with their own IP address) on the same
NIC (Ethernet) and still use port 80 for each IP address?  Or will the first
instance started take control of port 80 to the exclusion of the other
instances?   If so, would this mean that we would have to have 1 NIC per
instance in order to use port 80?

If we do separate the apps to different instances, would we see any
performance benefit?

We want to separate the instances so we can shut down individual apps
without taking all of them down.

How would you do this?

Thanks,

Steve