Deploy Java Web Applications in AWS

Introduction:

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a popular cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services for hosting and managing web applications. Java is one of the most widely used programming languages for building web applications, and AWS provides a number of tools and services that can be used to deploy and manage Java web applications.

To deploy a Java web application in AWS, there are several steps that need to be followed. These include:

1. Choosing an appropriate AWS service for hosting the application. AWS offers a variety of services for hosting web applications, including Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, and AWS Lambda.
2. Configuring the hosting environment. This involves setting up the necessary infrastructure and configuring security settings, network settings, and other environment variables.
3. Preparing the application for deployment. This involves building the application and packaging it into a deployable format, such as a JAR file.
4. Deploying the application. This involves uploading the application to the hosting environment and configuring any necessary settings, such as database connections and environment variables.
5. Testing the application. This involves running tests to ensure that the application is functioning as expected and is ready for production use.

Some of the key benefits of deploying Java web applications in AWS include high availability, scalability, and security. AWS provides a range of tools and services that can be used to ensure that web applications are highly available and can scale to meet changing demands. Additionally, AWS provides a number of security features, such as identity and access management, encryption, and network security, that can help to protect web applications from security threats.

Are you having a hard time configuring and managing your servers for deploying your Java Web Applications? If yes then you have come to the right place. So in this article, I will show you how to deploy Java Web applications on AWS. The process of deploying your Java web applications on AWS is completely hassle-free and less time-consuming.

Here I will be covering the following pointers:

• What is AWS?
• Why Java Web Application in AWS?
• How to Deploy Java Web Applications in AWS?

So let us begin with our first topic.

What is AWS?

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a cloud computing platform offered by Amazon. It provides a wide range of cloud-based services, including computing power, storage, databases, analytics, networking, machine learning, and many more.

AWS is designed to enable businesses and individuals to easily and cost-effectively access computing resources on a pay-as-you-go basis, without needing to invest in expensive hardware or infrastructure. AWS allows users to quickly and easily provision and manage resources as needed, scaling up or down as required to meet changing demands.

AWS is used by a wide range of organizations, from small startups to large enterprises and government agencies. Its services are available in multiple regions around the world, and it provides a range of tools and services that can be used to build and deploy a wide range of applications, from simple websites to complex enterprise applications.

Why Java Web Applications on AWS?

Easy to use

AWS is designed to allow application providers, ISVs, and vendors to quickly and securely host your applications – whether an existing application or a new SaaS-based application. You can use the AWS Management Console or well-documented web services APIs to access AWS’s application hosting platform.

Flexible

AWS enables you to select the operating system, programming language, web application platform, database, and other services you need. With AWS, you receive a virtual environment that lets you load the software and services your application requires. This eases the migration process for existing applications while preserving options for building new solutions.

Cost-Effective

You pay only for the computing power, storage, and other resources you use, with no long-term contracts or up-front commitments. For more information on comparing the costs of other hosting alternatives with AWS, see the AWS Economics Center

Reliable

With AWS, you take advantage of a scalable, reliable, and secure global computing infrastructure, the virtual backbone of Amazon.com’s multi-billion dollar online business that has been honed for over a decade.

Scalable and high-performance

Using AWS tools, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing, your application can scale up or down based on demand. Backed by Amazon’s massive infrastructure, you have access to compute and storage resources when you need them.

Secure

AWS utilizes an end-to-end approach to secure and harden our infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures. For more information, see the AWS Security Center.

How to deploy Java Web Application in AWS?

Before we see how to deploy Java Web Application Let me share a few best practices that you must follow.

General Best Practices

The size and installation complexity of web applications can vary greatly, therefore there is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution for deploying and hosting Java applications. However, there are some universal best practices to consider when deploying any web application:

• Understand the deployment, installation, and configuration characteristics of the application.
• Understand application expectations from initial deployment to future scalability, availability, and backup and recovery requirements.
• Use automation whenever possible for deployment and other tasks where consistency is important.
• Leverage source code or application repositories to protect your application.

Now let us see various types of Java applications and their mechanisms.

Application on AWS

AWS offers several tools and services to enable both AWS-managed and customer-managed Java application deployment. The table below is a high-level reference to help identify the most appropriate option for a specific scenario. The following sections describe these different approaches and their applicable use cases in more detail.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling Java web applications. Elastic Beanstalk supports several platform configurations for Java applications, including multiple versions of Java with the Apache Tomcat application server and Java-only configurations for applications that do not use Tomcat.

The Java-only option allows customers to include any required library JAR files in the source bundle for Java web applications that don’t use a web container or use a different one, such as Jetty or GlassFish. Once deployed, Elastic Beanstalk automatically manages capacity provisioning, load balancing, and Auto Scaling. This approach is appropriate for companies deploying Java applications that include the following criteria:

• Require minimal OS changes. (Note that Elastic Beanstalk configuration files support advanced platform and OS configuration options. However, this requires additional Elastic Beanstalk packaging effort and expertise.)
• Either run in Apache Tomcat 7 or 8 or are packaged with their own web container

Elastic Beanstalk supports the following packaging and deployment mechanisms:

• Custom applications developed and deployed directly to Elastic Beanstalk using Eclipse and the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse
• Applications are packaged into a JAR, WAR, or ZIP file, then deployed with the Elastic Beanstalk console, EB CLI, or Elastic Beanstalk API calls. To deploy multiple applications to one Elastic Beanstalk environment, customers can bundle multiple WAR files into a single ZIP file.

Steps to Deploy a Java Application to AWS Cloud

Before proceeding further there are a few prerequisites for this.

1. JDK 8 or higher
2. Tomcat 8 or higher
3. Eclipse IDE for Java EE
4. Free AWS account

Once you have all of this then we are good to go.

1. First, let us create a sample Java Web Application in Eclipse. For that Click on File -> New -> Dynamic Web Project. Now name the project with whatever name you want. Here I am naming it s DemoWebApp. Click on Next and then click on Finish. After this, you will see that your project has been created in your workspace.
2. Now you can create any web application such as servlets, JSP, etc. Here I will select JSP. For that right-click on DemoWebApp -> New -> JSP file. Name the file as sample.jsp. Once you do this then in the body section of this file, write a simple text such as ” This is a sample JSP” or whatever that you want.
3. Now I will test this application locally before going to AWS. For that, you need to navigate to your tomcat directory using the command prompt (since I am using Windows 10 OS) and use the command startup.bat. This will start tomcat.
4. Once Tomcat is started, go to your project on Eclipse. Right Click on Project and click on properties. Then click on Server and select Tomcat Server. Click on apply and close.
5. 
6. Now right-click on your project-> Run as-> Run on Server. If everything works you will be able to see the output which is the text ” This is a sample JSP”. With this, we have tested our application locally. Now right-click on your project -> Export -> WAR file. Here you enter the destination where you want to save the war file.
7. Now we will deploy this application on AWS. For this go to the AWS homepage. Click on Services -> Compute -> Elastic Beanstalk. Now click on create a new application. Enter the name of the application and create a new environment for it. Now select Web Server Environment. Now in Base Configuration, Select Tomcat in the Preconfigured Platform. In the Application Code select the WAR file that we created in the previous step. Now click on Upload.
8. Uploading the WAR file will take a few minutes. Once it is done you will see the following page. Here you can see the URL. Click on the URL and you will see a JSP with your text message in it.

So this is how you deploy the Java web application in AWS. With this, we have come to the end of this article on the Deploy Java Web App in AWS. I hope you have understood everything that I have explained here.