What are the major differences between a web application deployed as a JAR versus it deployed on an application server as a WAR?
My case is that, I have developed a REST service using Spring Boot and that is packaged as a JAR file. The service may have to handle 500-1000 requests at the same time and I'm working on improving the performance of the service.
From a performance perspective, is it better to install an application server and deploy the application as a WAR rather than just execute the JAR as a standalone process?
Would the application server like Tomcat give more control related to number of configurable threads as compared to its JAR counterpart?
The question is a bit incorrect, as JAR and WAR are simply a packaging format.
SpringBoot uses Tomcat as an embedded server by default, so there won't be a difference between running Tomcat as application server and deploying your application as WAR, or simply running a JAR.
What really matters is your code. If you plan to serve 1000rps, I would highly advice looking at Spring Reactor (as you already use Spring) or Vert.x, to provide as much concurrency as possible.
Not sure if it is this is exactly what you are looking for.
But this link will definitely add a point to the discussion-
https://dzone.com/articles/standalone-web-application
They are all ZIP format files, not any differents, just the ext string.
Related
I am building microservices(approx 15 to microservices) project for huge organization, I wants to know is it recommended to go for external tomcat with war file or just use the embedded tomcat of spring boot with jar file. Also I am facing issue after building my project on jenkins how to copy the file from jekins server to my server and run the file there and create and automatic build and deployment pipeline i.e. everytime I push the code it should be automatically deployed.
You need to identify what compels you to go for external tomcat deployment. As SpringBoot provides out of box facility to deploy within the container, it is not required to go for external tomcat deployment.
Besides, if you are going for many microservices, it will be good to have with built in springboot with embeded tomcat. Springboot also provides the facility to use undertow or jetty. I would recommend to use SpringBoot with either embeded tomcat or undertow with docker container for more flexibility.
It will be good if you provide the issues you are facing.
You can check the below link for reference.
https://dzone.com/articles/spring-boot-with-external-tomcat
I didn't encourage until today companies using Spring Boot and deploying in an external Tomcat.
If there is no requirements from your Infrastructure department, I would go with the embedded tomcat.
JARs vs WARs
I think both have their use cases, like a car vs a truck.
Getting started with jar files is definitely easier, it's provided out of the box. However, using war files in a tomcat has a few perks too:
You can use the "manager" UI to update/redeploy a webapp easely
You can monitor server status, inspect sessions, basically have a look under the hood
You can deploy/update multiple wars independently, which might be handy for larger project
...but there is definitely some learning curve to set things up, and it feels a bit ...old. So it's up to you if you want an easy "jar car" or a whole "servlet container truck". ...or you can also have multiple cars. ;) Each has ups and downs.
Pipelines
Like for any other topic, there are very different ways to achieve this. If you use an extern tomcat, you may configure a "script" user and deploy it like this (or similar):
curl -u username:pwd -d path=/something -d war=file:target/someWar.war https://someurl.com/manager/deploy
...or you can go the other way round and create Docker images, or cloud-init VMs or whatever. Or just a shell script to stop it remotely, upload it and start it.
Depending on your situation, the know how of your team mates, etc, one or the other may be easier.
I have 5 Spring Boot web applications but have only one Server (low-end).
What is the best way to deploy all 5 in one Server? Having only one web container (Tomcat) and deploy all of them as separate war files on the same Tomcat or run all 5 on different Tomcat containers (Spring Boot default behavior)?
What is your recommendation by considering performance and maintenanability?
IMHO, if you're running a resource-constrained server, your best bet is to deploy all of your applications as war files under a single tomcat instance. Running multiple servers would just add un-needed overhead.
If you have little resources on your server, you don't have much choice. Each Java virtual machine has a significant overhead, so running separate containers will make you reach the limits of your low-end server earlier.
You will have to deploy your wars in the same tomcat server, with different servlet contexts.
However, if you have sufficient RAM, the cleanest way in my opinion is creating docker images and running the standalone spring-boot jars in each container.
My recommendations are:
If these WARs are independent of each other, deploy them in a different Web server, not only Tomcat or whatever container you're using, but also in either different virtual server, dedicated server or Cloud instances.
Deploying in different "virtual server" you can scale horizontally, so this is good for future workloads.
Deploy a load balancer from your hosting provider, or you can use Nginx for doing that.
Hope this helps!
From my experience, using container such as docker is the easiest way to maintenance multiple spring-boot applications. When you have a new server, it can be migrated easily, and the application can be updated without interrupting other applications. But you may need to spend extra time to learn how to use the container.
If using Tomcat, it is recommended to separate the tomcat instances. One tomcat for each WAR file. Putting multiple WAR files in one tomcat can make the maintenance difficult. Tomcat hot deployment / auto deploy tends to have some errors which require you to restart the whole tomcat
Is it possible to deploy a java web application using Hibernate and Spring MVC to a simple website cPanel-> File Manager as we deploy a simple php/mysql application?
Thanks in Advance
With Spring Boot you can build jar with embedded Servlet container, so Java runtime has to be available at minimum.
Amount of RAM available on shared hosting PHP services is often pretty low, so may not be enough for your needs. To find hosting for your Java/Spring application, pick hosting services that specialize on Java/Servlets.
Also if you are planning to rely your business on such application you should avoid shared hosting as same machine is aggregated between various users. So aggregated users can degrade performance of your application.
Yes, it is possible to deploy war file into cPanel-> File Manager as we deploy a simple php/mysql application. But for that you required tomcat in file manager . Just zip the .war file and upload in manager directory and just extract that zip file.thats it!
Please refer this:
https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/CKB/How+to+Deploy+Java+Applications
I'm complete able to configure spring boot in both cases, the question here is which of them are more robust and is the more recommended, because I didn't find in the spring boot documentation the recommended way to deploy it in a production environment, my concerns about use the embedded container are:
If I want to set it as a Windows or Linux service, is the jar file the best option?
If I use the jar file I'm not going to have access to restart the server.
Maybe in the future I need more applications in the same container.
If I restart the machine I have to execute again the java -jar.
The question in general is which is better use the jar file and execute it as java -jar jarname.jar in production or change the packaging to war set the tomcat as provided and set the generated war in an empty tomcat.
I hope you can help me.
---EDIT---
Many times the answer is depends, this is for a normal web application or REST web service.
jar packaging is perfectly suitable for production and you should rather fallback to war only if you really have to - which is often the case when you cannot control your deployment environment (which is often the case in large enterprises).
There is a chapter in Spring Boot Reference about setting up Spring Boot based application as a Unix/Linux/Windows service: Installing Spring Boot applications.
Regarding your concern:
Maybe in the future I need more applications in the same container.
With embedded containers if you need more applications running on the same machine, you should start two applications separately, each running on different port and effectively you will end up with two containers running - which is good, applications are better isolated from each other.
About a month ago I had the question like yours.
Let me share my conclusion:
1) JAR:
You can run independently every appliction with different ports (in linux, java -jar ... > app_logs.log &) and you can route it (e.g. nginx). Note that, restarting is not problem. You can write custom bash script (like this: ps aux | grep appname and kill by PID)
But there are some problems with configuring production app. Property files will archived into jar.
2) WAR
You can deploy into container and just run it. Easy managing at the server. If you want to re-configure app, open properties file from unarchived folder inside container, change it as need and restart container. So, managing and configuring will be easy.
But, if you want to run another app in this server with another port, then you must install another copy of container and config it.
So, in my practice, using war app easier than jar to manage and re-configure.
I don't know that much about Windows services but on Linux you can add the execution of a jar to a RC-Scripts (and thus make the application start at a certain run-level). For a spring boot app you just have to symlink to the jar and you can start/stop/etc like any other service, see: Spring Boot application as a Service
restart the machine or the JVM? A shutdown mechanism is built into spring boot, you just have to activate it (and you should enable security machanism so that not anybody can do that), see: How to shutdown a Spring Boot Application in a correct way?
Spring-Boot enables microservices - so the idea is to have one embedded webapp-container for each webapp/microservice. This reduces the risk of losing all services when only one is going down.
Yes. and you have to execute catalina.sh|bat start after every restart. Or you add an appropriate startup script (see 1.)
I sense that you'd rather do it the old-fashioned way. Despite the 'matter of taste' answer, there is one argument pro-jar: the only dependency is the JVM! The rest (the web-app-container, db-drivers, other libraries) is all part of the package you deliver. And if you decide to change the container for the next release, so will it be.
One more reason to use "war" file in production.
Springboot masked an error Jetty threw whereas WAR deployed in Jetty correctly caught it ( though issue below is still under review )
https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/8917#issuecomment-294673487
I don't know much about server kind of things, But my recommendation is
If you are using Monolithic application, better to use war with
external tomcat.
If you are using for Micro Service applications, use embedded
tomcat with different port. And each micro service applications are
independent from each other.
If I were to deploy an application on Tomcat vs. Websphere, what are things that I need to consider?
Do I have to develop my Java code differently if developing in one app server vs another?
Edit:
I will be funneling people from a website into a web app that does credit card processing and e-signatures (cc processing and e-sigs are through separate services). That is its sole job
You cannot use EJBs on Tomcat (unless you add OpenEJB). If your WebSphere deployment uses EJBs, you'll have to remove them to deploy on Tomcat.
If you use any Java EE features beyond servlet/JSP engine and JNDI naming service you'll have to eliminate them from your app.
Tomcat accepts WAR packages. If you package your app into an EAR on WebSphere, you'll have to change it to WAR for Tomcat.
Both use JNDI for data sources. There might be some nagging differences in naming conventions, but if you stick to the standard they should be portable.
If you use any WebSphere specific code in your app, you'll have to remove it to deploy on Tomcat.
If your app is servlets, JSPs, and JDBC you can deploy on either one without any problems.
You can think as Tomcat as a subset of Websphere, so theoretically everything that works on Tomcat will work in Websphere.
But...Deploying in Websphere, in my humble opinion, is a terrible pain, while deploying in Tomcat just works. (And if fails, just delete temporary folders)
Without knowing the technologies you are using, that's all I can say.
Depends, what are you trying to deploy?
Tomcat isn't a full EE server--are you trying to deploy an EE app?
If you're just deploying a web app, it's more important to consider which version of the servlet spec/etc. each server implements.