Google AppEngine Default container, Deployments

Question

I'm trying to learn Google App Engine, though they're making it very difficult.

When I deploy an application through windows console or through Eclipse's GAE plugin, it works fine, but what am I deploying the application to? What web server/container is being used? Should I be able to see the deployed files in my google dev console?

Also, when I use the "click-to-deploy" feature to deploy an instance of tomcat, it sets it to a new URL as an "external" ip address. Why is this not being set to my project's appspot URL? Is this an entirely different server created in addition to the default one that is created automatically?

Searching for GAE info on the web just returns millions of pages about their offerings, but nothing to explain the behind the scenes stuff.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Let me break down the questions:

1. When you deploy through the console or the Eclipse plugin, you are deploying to the App Engine runtime. You can see what is running by going to the App Engine section of the Google Developer's Console.

This app is served from the .appspot.com domain as well.

2. Click-to-deploy is not App Engine, but Compute Engine . Compute Engine is more akin to a VM in the cloud. You get SSH access and a Linux or Windows operating system, but don't get all the auto-scaling and things built into App Engine. You would access this through the IP address, not the appspot URL.

I hope this helps!