To pass specific JVM arguments to Tomcat only, you can use the CATALINA_OPTS

environment

export CATALINA_OPTS=" Xms256m -Xmx1g -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"

content of the server.xml file is

not reloaded until Tomcat restarts, any changes you make will not be visible until
Tomcat is restarted
sample web application using Tomcat implicit context creation.
still able to deploy and access a sample web application using Tomcat implicit
context creation.