The popularity of Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) seems to give birth to a new solution every few weeks. It’s not hard to figure out why. PaaS is revolutionizing the way enterprise applications are built and deployed, while Java is a popular platform for creating those apps.

One of the newbies on the Java Paas block is CumuLogic. Just a few months ago, CumuLogic released a public beta of its solution, which enables enterprises, cloud providers and ISVs to build and manage Java PaaS in public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

CumuLogic Java PaaS Support and Features

CumuLogic provides a fairly comprehensive development and deployment solution for public and private clouds running on Amazon EC2, Cloud.com (acquired by Citrix), Eucalyptus and VMware. The vendor has promised to support OpenStack soon.

The platform supports the KVM, Xen and ESXi hypervisors, as well as the following middleware components:

• Apache and Nginx Web servers
• Red Hat JBoss
• Tomcat
• IBM WebSphere containers
• MySQL and DB2 databases

CumuLogic enables developers to manage multiple clouds from multiple vendors at the same time, as well as mix and match middleware software components — an ability that can accelerate the deployment of applications.

Another key benefit CumuLogic claims is enabling users to consolidate various legacy Java apps to a single platform, substantially lowering the cost of managing those apps.

“CumuLogic is unique in that we are one of the first companies to emerge with a full Java PaaS for the federated cloud,” said Rajesh Ramchandani, VP of Products at CumuLogic.

Other major features CumuLogic offers include:

• Developer and administration API, so developers can push applications to the cloud and manage the application lifecycle (i.e. deploy, un-deploy, version control, etc.)
• A Cloud Services Catalog for organizations to receive new infrastructure software and updates to their repositories in private clouds
• Application infrastructure lifecycle management to handle variations between the development environment and production environments

Tips for Using the CumuLogic Java PaaS

Before you start using CumuLogic PaaS, you should refer to CumuLogic Concepts to understand the platform terminology. Key concepts include:

• Environments. The platform creates an environment for each application. An application environment includes application .war files, a deployment descriptor file called cumulogic-web.xml, and datasource configuration along with database schema DDL files. An environment can be provisioned or deployed on any target cloud.
• Resource Pools. Each environment requires at least one resource pool, which is a set of infrastructure software such as an application server, a Web server, database server, and so on.

Deploying a Java Application on CumuLogic PaaS

Deploying applications to Cumulogic PaaS can be as simple as following these steps:

1. Go to the Manage Applications screen and select “Add Application.”
2. Fill in the requested information, such as the database servers and the JDBC/JNDI configuration.
3. Upload your app into the repository, and it is then available for deploying to the target cloud(s).
4. Select the application from the repository and then click on “Deploy.” The deploy screen will prompt you for an environment name where you will deploy the application. You can enter a name to create a new Environment or choose an existing environment. If an environment is already provisioned, it will be marked as such.

   If you choose to create a new environment, you must provision the resources — a task that can take time depending on your chosen cloud type.

5. While the application deployment is in the progress state, select “Show Events” to track deployment status. After resources are provisioned and the application is deployed, the status will turn green. At that point, the application should be accessible.
6. Click on the application name to access the application on the target cloud.

The Monitoring tab provides the utilization and performance details of each tier of the environment. The drop-down list has several monitoring metrics for each application server, Web server and database server.

Power users who know their way around cloud application deployments can pre-create and provision environments by going to the Resource Pool and Environments screens.

Ramchandani said of CumuLogic, “Instead of rewriting applications to fit new platforms and essentially giving up standardized application components, we sought to create a product that would give users the flexibility to keep using those components, from application platforms to databases.”