Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services). It is a service that doesn’t require users to have any knowledge of, or control over, the underlying technology infrastructure.
Spring Boot is a Java-based framework used to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based applications that you can "just run". It takes an opinionated view of the Spring platform and gets you up and running as quickly as possible.
In this post, we'll look at how to deploy a Spring Boot application to the cloud using Platform as a Service (PaaS). We'll also take a look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of using PaaS.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides a platform for developers to build, test, and deploy applications. PaaS providers offer a platform, typically including operating system, programming language runtime, database, web server, and middleware, that can be used to develop and run an application.
PaaS can be used to deploy applications to the cloud without the need to provision and manage the underlying infrastructure. This can simplify the process of deployment and make it more cost-effective, as the PaaS provider will typically offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
PaaS can also make it easier to scale an application, as the underlying infrastructure can be easily scaled up or down as needed.
There are a number of benefits to using PaaS:
There are also some drawbacks to using PaaS:
Now that we've looked at some of the benefits and drawbacks of using PaaS, let's take a look at how to deploy a Spring Boot application to the cloud.
We'll be using the Heroku PaaS for this example. Heroku offers a free tier that can be used for development and testing applications.
Before we can deploy our Spring Boot application to Heroku, we need to do a few things:
The first thing we need to do is create a Heroku account. We can do this by going to the Heroku signup page.
Once we've signed up for a Heroku account, we can log in to the Heroku Dashboard.
Next, we need to install the Heroku CLI. The Heroku CLI is a command line interface that can be used to manage Heroku applications.
We can install the Heroku CLI by following the instructions on the Heroku CLI download page.
Once the Heroku CLI is installed, we can verify that it is working by running the following command:
$ heroku --version
A Procfile is a text file that contains instructions for Heroku on how to run our application.
Our Procfile will need to contain the following line:
web: java -jar target/my-app-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
This tells Heroku to run our application as a web server using the Java runtime.
Now that we've done the necessary setup, we're ready to deploy our application.
We can deploy our application by running the following command from the root directory of our project:
$ heroku create
This will create a new Heroku application and set up a remote repository for our project.
Next, we can deploy our application by running the following command:
$ git push heroku master
This will push our code to the Heroku remote repository and trigger a deployment.
Once the deployment is complete, we can open our application in a web browser by running the following command:
$ heroku open