deploy java web project without deploying JDK and tomcat on windows azure

Question

Can we deploy a java project on windows azure without uploading JDK and Tomcat on storage in windows azure? If yes, please provide me steps how to do it.

I made a project as provided in windows azure create a sample application in Java. But at time i have to create a cloud service, I am supposed to deploy JDK and tomcat which totals around 100-130 MB. Isn't there any solution so that we should deploy cloud service and not JDK and tomcat.

Answer 1

Azure VM images do not include the JDK or any of the Java web servers (Tomcat, Jetty, etc.). You need to get them, from somewhere .

So... when building a Java app via Eclipse and related Cloud Service template, there's a startup script that bootstraps your worker role instances. This involves grabbing the SDK and web server (Tomcat, Jetty, etc.) from somewhere and placing it on your instance's disk. Since you're using Cloud Services (worker role in this case), the OS disks are stateless: Each time a new VM instance spins up, it starts fresh, and you're responsible for setting things up (via startup script).

So: You need to set up your SDK and web server. You can either bundle these with your deployment package or download them from somewhere. The former increases the deployment package size by quite a bit (maybe 100MB?). The latter requires you to download the bits from somewhere. You can either download from somewhere like Oracle (which requires you to go through a license agreement each time), or from your own storage account (which is very fast, as long as it's in the same region as your code deployment). Further: being in the same data center, there are no bandwidth charges when downloading stuff to your worker role instances.

The current Eclipse plugin has a setting for your worker role, where you specify blob storage for your JDK and web server. By doing this, it's basically a one-time setup (except when it's time to upgrade the JDK or Tomcat/Jetty version, and then you'll need to re-upload to blob storage). Once these bits are in blob storage, you only need to include your Java classes in your deployment package.