It is possible to run multiple instances of OpenMRS in the same servlet container instance. OpenMRS looks up database connection properties from the runtime properties file and so the different instances can connect to different databases. The runtime properties file lookup is based on the name of the webapp, so creating a second instance is (almost) as easy as just renaming the war file and deploying it.
...
You might want to change the location of the application data directory using a using runtime properties. You can also change the folder where modules are stored using a global property: module_repository_folder. You can use either a relative path or an absolute path.
If you don't change either of those, data stored on the filesystem file system (like which modules to load at startup, cached data exports, etc.) will be shared by both instances.
For standalone deployments
TBD
For
...
developers using Jetty
The standard "mvn jetty:run" command in the webapp folder starts "openmrs" on port 8080. You can start a second instance of openmrs on a different port and with a different context path by using two java Java properties: webapp.name and jetty.port:
...