Cloud computing made easy
What is this?
Java Web Apps in a Box is a virtual machine that works with Amazon's EC2; that is, if you're looking for a production-ready environment for deploying your web application, whether it be a Grails application, Struts 2 or Spring MVC -- it doesn't matter! Java Web Apps is a Ubuntu server running Tomcat, Java 6, and MySQL and can scale to your heart's content.
This means you don't have to run out an purchase a machine and throw it in a data center. All you have to do is fire up Java Web Apps in a Box and everything is done for you -- all you do is deploy your .war file and watch the traffic steam in! You can deploy your .war file via scp or even via Tomcat's manager panel. Configuring MySQL is easy too -- log into your Java Web Apps in Box instance and run your DDL.
What does it cost?
Java Web Apps in a Box is free! EC2, however, is not -- EC2 charges you about $0.10 an hour. Depending on your strategy, you can also sign up for special discounts should you plan on keeping your instance running for an extended period of time. Of course, for $0.10 an hour you get massive scalability, Amazon style. Plus, you don't pay to power the machine and when you want to turn things off, it takes roughly a minute.
How do I do it?
First, check out our tutorial or if you're a pro log into Amazon's AWS Management Console and hit the AMIs link on the left hand menu. In the main console, search for instance "ami-aa5abac3" -- when it shows up, right click and select the Launch instance option.
When your instance has started, look on the AWS Management Console for the Public DNS name -- that'll be the URL you'll use to navigate to Tomcat via your browser or SSH via a terminal. The rest is up to you!