cloud platforms for java

Cloud Platforms for Java

2

WHAT I’LL LOOK AT?

• What needs to be managed

• How deployment works

• What services are available

• Pluses and minuses (as perceived by me)

© Copyright 2014. 3Pillar | All rights reserved Strictly Confidential

3

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - OVERVIEW

• Truly a platform• You don’t manage machines• You just upload the binaries and GAE runs them

• Large variety of services:• JDO & JPA interfaces to data, MySQL in the

cloud,• Memcache, GAE datastore• URL fetch API, Java Mail API• Images service – generate/process images• Oauth (experimental), Google accounts• Cron jobs


4

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - TOOLING• GAE SDK• Maven and ant build supported• Local app engine development server• Command line tool for interaction with an app

• IDE Support• Best supported is Eclipse• NetBeans plugin• IntelliJ Idea – support built into the ultimate

edition


5

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - RUN

• Test/debug: hit run/debug in Eclipse• Console output says where the app runs locally

• Run local outside IDE – command line:

• dev_appserver.sh helloworld.jar

• Upload and run in the cloud:• appcfg.sh update helloworld.jar


6

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - MINUSES• No direct filesystem access

• No direct socket access

• Must be quick (but there are backends)• request handling must finish within seconds, or it

gets you killed

• No signed jars

• There's a jre class whitelist• Use of any jre class not in the list gets you killed

• Not really service-oriented• No REST/SOAP APIs, or at least not published as such• You inherit and use factories a lot


7

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - PLUSES

• Indexing of the datastore, much nicer than a plain file system

• Auto-generated but can be hand-tuned

• Built-in logging

• Logs can be downloaded

• Routing by domain header in request

• One app can serve multiple domains

• Backends = special apps

• 60 seconds cap per request, more mem & CPU

• Created/destroyed on demand

• Many services = APIs available in-app

• App identity, logs, images, oauth, search, URL fetch, Java mail, many others

• Many are experimental and evolving


8

GOOGLE APP ENGINE – HELLO WORLD// from the SDK demos – no difference to tomcat package org.example;

import java.io.IOException;import javax.servlet.http.*;

public class HelloAppEngineServlet extendsHttpServlet {

public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req,

HttpServletResponse resp)throws IOException {

resp.setContentType("text/plain");resp.getWriter().println("Hello, world");

}}


9

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - BACKENDS<backends>

<backend name="small"><class>B1</class><options><public>true</public></options>

</backend>

<backend name="medium"><class>B2</class><instances>3</instances><options><fail-fast>true</fail-fast></options>

</backend>

<backend name="big"><class>B4</class><options><dynamic>true</dynamic></options></backend>

</backends>

10

GOOGLE APP ENGINE – DATASTORE• Datastore is hierarchies of typed entities

/Person:grandpa / Person:dad / Person:son

• When creating an entity, you can specify a kind, a key and an ancestor

• Entities can have additional properties – indexed & unindexed

• Can query by keys, ancestors or indexed props


11

GOOGLE APP ENGINE - DATASTOREEntity entity = new Entity("entityType");entity.setProperty("mykey", mykey);entity.setUnindexedProperty("value", value);datastore = DatastoreServiceFactory.getDatastoreService();Key key = datastore.put(entity);

Query query = new Query("entityType");PreparedQuery prepared = datastore.prepare(query)List<Entity> entities =prepared.asList(FetchOptions.Builder.withLimit(100));

Entity retrieved = datastore.get(key);datastore.delete(retrieved);


12

AMAZON WEB SERVICES - OVERVIEW• Most renowned service is EC – Elastic cloud

• The Java app platform is actually Elastic Beanstalk

• Servlet-based, like GAE

• More languages supported than GAE

• Big bonus: services are not coupled to other services, like for GAE


13

AMAZON WEB SERVICES - TOOLING• SDK• Bunch of libs, no binaries to run locally• Simple and easy to set up projects with maven

or ant

• Eclipse plugin• One-click deploy

• Netbeans built-in support• From v7.2 onwards

• IntelliJ Idea• Extensive support for managing AWS services


14

AMAZON WEB SERVICES - RUN• No local dev server• None needed, because you can debug locally,

sincer AWS services are callable from anywhere, not just apps running on Beanstalk or EC2

• Beanstalk server is tomcat• One click publishing of apps in Eclipse

• From the AWS console• Just upload the war file


15

AMAZON WEB SERVICES - PLUSES• Full control

• Full Java platform• Although no JEE, you can install your own on

EC2, but than you don't use beanstalk anymore• Easier migration into the cloud

• Gobs of services, truly service oriented

• S3 more like a local file system

• Anything you like via EC2 instances

• Big plus: asymmetric key crypto for access control


16

AMAZON WEB SERVICES - MINUSES• Not many, no really bad things

• Default project in Eclipse is uses jsp instead of a servlet

• Deployment to tomcat only

• Amazon's initial offering (EC2) shows through• Every app instance is started as a new EC2

instance

• Monitoring happens at the machine level

• Only infrastructure scalability is addressed• there aren't built-in, Beanstalk-prov


17

AMAZON WEB SERVICES – S3// files are kept in buckets

AmazonS3 s3 = new AmazonS3Client(new new BasicAWSCredentials("key", "secret"));

s3.createBucket(“myBucket”);s3.putObject(

new PutObjectRequest(“myBucket”, “fileName”, someFile));

S3Object object = s3.getObject(new GetObjectRequest(“myBucket”,

“fileName”));

s3.deleteObject(“myBucket”, “fileName”);


18

HEROKU - OVERVIEW• Runs on Amazon EC2• a PaaS on top of IaaS from another provider

• Dynos and slugs• Dynos are sort of a VM, but based on cgroups• Slugs are your apps packaged for a dyno

• Many languages, in its latest incarnation:• Ruby, Java, Python, Scala, JavaScript, Clojure

• Thought to be extremely beginner-friendly


19

HEROKU - TOOLING• Provides a toolbelt• On Ubuntu:

wget -qO- https://toolbelt.heroku.com/install-ubuntu.sh | sh

• Toolbelt contents:• Local app runner – not local server• CLI for uploading and updating apps• GIT interface -commit to git updates your

running app

• Easy start with Java• Tons of samples on github.com/heroku• Sources of part of heroku itself also on github


20

HEROKU - RUN

• Toolbelt allows you to run profiles locally

• No specific one-click run in Eclipse• You develop & deploy normal Java apps

• => no need for extra test/debug fixtures


21

HEROKU – PLUSES & MINUSES• Heroku is different, that's all.

• Dynos ~ like micro-/lightweight Vms• Better: no DNS/routing/security setup• Worse: a single open port => remote debugging

sucks (but is possible w. special mechanisms)

• No prepackaged app server in dynos• Must deploy your own runner with the app• Heroku's git repo provides runners (Jetty,

tomcat7)


22

HEROKU – PLUSES & MINUSES

• Git push updates the app• No intermediate on-platform tests possible• You can always use dev/test/prod branches

• No dynamic scaling• But there are 3rd party services for this

• Rich services environment• Really really really really rich – several dozen• Message queues, storage, monitoring, cron,

memcache, mail, log & analysis, you name it• Debugging with add-on services locally is not

ideal


23

HEROKU – POSTGRES ACCESS// use heroku-provided tools to provision databasesURI dbUri = new URI(System.getenv("DATABASE_URL"));String username = dbUri.getUserInfo().split(":")[0];String password = dbUri.getUserInfo().split(":")[1];String dbUrl = "jdbc:postgresql://" + dbUri.getHost() +

':' + dbUri.getPort() + "/" + dbUri.getPort();Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(dbUrl, username, password);

Statement stmt = connection.createStatement();stmt.executeUpdate("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ticks");stmt.executeUpdate("CREATE TABLE ticks (tick timestamp)");stmt.executeUpdate("INSERT INTO ticks VALUES (now())");ResultSet rs =

stmt.executeQuery("SELECT tick FROM ticks");while (rs.next()) {

System.out.println("Tick: " +rs.getTimestamp("tick"));}


24

HEROKU – MONGODB ACCESS

// use heroku-provisioned tools to set up// MongoDB for your appMongoURI mongoURI =

new MongoURI(System.getenv("MONGOHQ_URL"));DB db = mongoURI.connectDB();db.authenticate(

mongoURI.getUsername(),mongoURI.getPassword());

Set<String> colls = db.getCollectionNames();System.out.println("Collections: " +

colls.toString());


25

WINDOWS AZURE - OVERVIEWI know, I'm surprised too.But don't get too excited.

• There's a download available for Linux

• Also a maven dependency

• And an Eclipse plugin• It doesn't install on Linux• There's a CLI tool for Linux – using node


26

WINDOWS AZURE – GOOD AND BAD

• VM-based• both Linux and Windows VMS are available

• Small selection of add-ons• storage, some media services, CDN, mail,

authentication, message queuing

• Some more exotic services• Phone and address validation – worldwide• SMS, outgoing voice calls

• You have to download, install and configure your own app server for Java-based web apps!


27

OPENSTACK - OVERVIEW• A first attempt at standardization

• Nothing Java-specific here, no wrapper libs included

• Primitive, compared to commercial offerings• The only standard service is storage• Storage is much like Amazon's S3 buckets• Fully RESTful APIs• API is standardized, but only for infrastructure-related

operations (server creation, resource provisioning, reboot/re-image etc.)

• OpenStack-based providers differentiate themselves via addon services• a few well-known names: HP, IBM, Canonical, Rackspace


28

CLOUDBEES - OVERVIEW

• Really great, but not so well known

• Standards-based, i.e. no jre restrictions a la GAE• Deploys to standards-based app servers

(tomcat, jboss)

• Rich integrated dev resources & services• built-in maven, svn, git repos• Sonar, Jenkins, SVN, GIT, Selenium in the cloud

– all integrated

• Rich autoscaling config built in


29

CLOUDBEES-RUN• One click run• Both local and deploy to the cloud• Does not really care what your app uses or does

• CLI interface with the SDK• Interact with deployed apps

• Maven plugin• goals for deploying to jenkins, to prod, or run

locally


30

CLOUDBEES - TOOLING

• Mainstream IDEs are supported• Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ Idea• SDK

• Many services/add-ons available• Relational and NoSQL databases• Message queues, search & indexing, log

analysis• Private maven repo, wiki, Even an online IDE• Add-ons provided by other cloud users


31

JELASTIC - OVERVIEW• Very friendly console in browser• Point & click interface for deployments

• Very simple• Not much there except create environments and

• upload wars• No IDE plugins or local SDKs

• Not many services• Nosql & relational databases• Virtual edicated servers


32

JELASTIC – PLUSES AND MINUSES

• Feels like the VisualBasic of Java PaaS

• Very few things to configure• Tomcat 6/7, Java 6/7, jetty, glassfish• No plain Java apps, no distinction between

frontends and workers, no restrictions

• Provides automatic scaling

• Has data centers all over the civilized world +

• Russia• Via partners


33

CONCLUSIONS• No standards yet

• Emerging standards are rudimentary• OpenStack only has storage API specified

• All platforms have significant shortcomings

• Some platforms are not very service-oriented• Except AWS


cloud platforms for java

Technology