How to Deploy Java EE Apps on Azure
Have you ever wondered why technologies are growing speedily? It is because of the demand and our dependencies that we have associated with technologies. There will not be a single person who will choose to do something on his own without the help of any technology. In and out, we rely on technology for almost everything, even though the house appliances, we are using a technology names internet of things to automate them, so that we do not have to get up and do something by ourselves. Today we shop online, we book our appointments to the doctor online, we book our tickets online, and we order the food online. Everything is made easier by these technologies.
But, have you ever wondered how do we have these technologies at our service? How are they developed? Did they always look like this? No? Well, there were no technologies once. There used to be programming languages that we used to automate stuff and different machines. All of these technologies we have today, these are all developed using programming languages. Programming is the set or collection of instructions that are combined to make something out of it. There were a lot of programming languages like C, C++, PHP, and many more, but java is a programming language that has always been a special one, due to its unlimited benefits. Even in today's world, java is the language we use the most to build application services for cloud computing. This is an incredible thing, and building a new cloud-based application is not the only remarkable thing. Java is a language that fits in every environment like cloud applications, mobile applications, desktop application, it can work well anywhere for anything.
What is Java?
If there is any way you are associated with the field of IT, you must know one programming language, and knowledge refers to the expert level knowledge here. But, which language to learn? which one is the best for the future? Every aspiring IT professional has these questions because there are so many programming languages right now. The first thing you should look forward to is your interest. If you like a programming language, you should learn that as you will love working with it. As of now and for the future, Java is the language that is the most recommended.
It is an all-purpose, object-oriented class-based programming language that you can run in any platform for anything. No language is perfect, but in comparison with others, it has very few dependencies. Sun Microsystems, the company it was developed for by James Gosling in the year 1991. The purpose to design was to run processors for some home appliances. They called in Oak firstly, but it was a name for another language. So, Gosling with his team found a new name for it, and we know it as Java now.
Applications of Java
As we see the continuous growth of technology every day, but the evolution does not stop for technologies only, it goes on to the programming languages as well. These programming languages are the building blocks of technologies, and there are a lot of applications that we utilize a programming language for. Let's look at some of the applications of programming languages.
- Mobile Applications
Java is the language we use to develop almost all the mobile applications. Java is the language that is compatible with the Android studio. The reason why java is preferred as the first language because it runs on the java virtual machine.
- Desktop GUI Applications
Java is used to develop GUI applications, just like android applications. For GUI applications, we use platforms like Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT), JavaFX, and Swing. We can easily design these applications using java and one of these platforms.
- Big Data Technologies
Java has been a great contributor to the overall success of big data. We are seeing technologies like Hadoop and programming language like scala just because of Java. Java has been playing a vital role in big data technologies.
- Business Applications
With Java, we create applications that are large-scale, reliable, multi-tiered, and secure. These applications play a big part in solving the problems of large enterprises. In java, applications are not as complex as they are in other programming languages.
- Cloud-Based Applications
Java is heavily involved in the field of cloud computing as well. There are features of cloud computing that are designed using java and are used to develop Saas, Paas, and Iaas. It is a big help to companies that want to build remote applications.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Today, we see how applications of cloud computing are growing across every industry, and it is not only limited to IT anymore. It is serving the business industry more than any other, as we can see how cloud solutions have revolutionized the world of business by making things easier. It is the time when almost half of the big organizations are using cloud solutions for some portion of their business.
When we talk about cloud computing and cloud solutions, there is always a need for a platform for that. When we look around, we can find multiple cloud platforms, but some of them are giants, that have the market captured. Microsoft Azure is the one platform that has been there standing tall for a long time. It is the fastest-growing and one of the largest cloud platform. It is a platform by Microsoft that provides you the access to cloud services and resources online. These services are way beyond just storing and accessing data now.
To become an expert or just start with Azure, you can go for the certifications like Azure administrator certification, Azure DevOps engineer certification.
There are many more certifications to go for. To get access you just need to have an internet connection and authority to access by Microsoft, and you are good to go.
Offerings by Microsoft Azure
Organizations around the world are now realizing that if they want great success in their business, they need to have solutions that are powered by cloud services. And once an organization starts looking at the beneficial side of cloud solutions, it cannot stop itself from transforming. Talking about cloud solutions, there is a need for a platform like Microsoft Azure to take the true leverage of cloud services. Let's look at the offerings of cloud solutions based on Microsoft Azure.
- IaaS and PaaS Capabilities
The offerings of Azure starts from the combination of Infrastructure as a service and Platform as a service. With these two, organizations are offered to outsource their infrastructure and to design their apps and solutions on a remote server. And these services are on pay as you go basis.
- Security Offerings
Microsoft Azure offers great security as its security process is designed based on the security development lifecycle. Azure's security is very good for the data and the applications you have on the cloud.
- Scalability and Ductility
When we use Azure for our cloud requirements, scalability is a feature we will never have to worry about. The cloud resources on Azure can scale itself from 10 users to 10 million users, and you will not have to do anything for that. The storage services of Azure are safe, secure, ductile, and performance efficient.
- Unmatched Hybrid Capabilities
Azure has the hybrid capabilities that are unmatched as it provides a reliable consistent, and easy mobility public cloud. There is a wide range of hybrid connections available in Azure like content delivery networks, virtual private networks, and ExpressRoute that also improve the performance of the cloud.
- Identity and Access Management
When it comes to accessing the right information by the right person, Azure has great command in it. When it comes to Azure's way to manage IAM, their system works pretty fine in this area. To become more agile, an enterprise should go for the IAM solution of Azure. Other cloud solutions offer almost the same kind of IAM system but with the speed, Azure is improving its services is incredible, and that is the one reason for its ever-growing reputation.
Deployment of Java EE apps on Azure
Whenever there is a requirement of deploying cloud-based applications, there are a lot of options to choose from, and eventually, it all comes down to the requirements. We can go for some traditional ones like infrastructure as a service, platform as a service to the evolved ones like Kubernetes and even serverless. Every mentioned model has its pros and cons, and it is you to decide which pros and cons you need.
Here, we will be looking at the deployment of Java EE apps on Microsoft Azure. And for that, we will opt the basic approach, in which we will deploy the Java EE application on a Microsoft Azure-based virtual machine, that is stored in a remote database. In this approach, we will work with a combination of Iaas and Paas. We will deploy a three-tier application of Java, and for that Payara is the server we will use in the deployment, and as the database, we will use Postgresql.
There are some pre-requisite things we will need before the deployment. The first thing is a Microsoft Azure account, and the second thing is the Azure CLI that we will use to manage resources of Azure.
- The first thing, in the beginning, is to set up Azure ID with Azure CLI that we will use to create a container group for resources.
- After that, we will install the relation database Postgres, which is an open-source database engine. We can deploy it either as a single server or as a hyperscale cluster. For our deployment process, we will need to use a single server. We will create the Postgres server instance on Azure and fill in the details. Database instance creation will begin now and takes few minutes in completion.
- A JSON response will be received, and we will write down the value of the attribute so that we can connect to Postgres later.
- To host our application, we will need a virtual machine that will run our application and lets us access it whenever we want. We will set up the VM, and it will take only a few minutes. In return to this, we will get a JSON response number, we will write it down for the future.
- We will have to grant VM access to the Postgres database, as it is not permitted by default. This is the way of Java EE app to communicate with the Postgres.
- It is now time to install the Payara server on our virtual machine. This server is an open-source application that helps to deploy Java EE apps in the cloud environment. But make sure to install the required toolset before the installation of the Payara server.
- Set up the Payara server by downloading and extracting the required files. Start the server after that. The booting process will take some time and after that, we are good to go.
- As we have set up our VM and the Payara server, it is time now to start the development of our application.
- Set up the application properly and deploy that on the server.
- When the deployment is finished, we can now test our application. But we cannot just access it using any public internet, as it is protected from that. We can access it by creating a firewall rule though.
- After the testing of the application is done, it is recommended to clean up the resources.
To summarize this, we have deployed a Java EE application on Microsoft Azure cloud using a virtual machine and a database that is Postgres. As we know, there are pros and cons to using any option of deployment. We can manage its infrastructure and scale it however we want to.
Well, deployment of Java EE applications on Azure cloud is not that complex because of all the support and software availability. These options are multiple and we can select any of them just by looking at the outcome we need.
That's all from our side.