Deploying a Java/Jakarta EE Application to JBoss EAP on Azure App Service

This demo shows how you can deploy a Java/Jakarta EE application to Azure using managed JBoss EAP on App Service (App Service is the premier PaaS platform on Azure). It is the demo for this talk. A video of the talk is available here.

We use Visual Studio Code but you can use any Maven capable IDE such as IntelliJ or Eclipse. We use Azure PostgreSQL but you can use Azure SQL, Azure MySQL, or Oracle DB@Azure. We use GitHub Actions but you can use any other CI/CD tool such as Jenkins.

Setup

• Install JDK 17 (we used Eclipse Temurin OpenJDK 17 LTS).
• Install VS Code for Java from here. Make sure the Java Extension Pack is installed.
• Download this repository somewhere in your file system (easiest way might be to download as a zip and extract).
• You will need an Azure subscription. If you don't have one, you can get one for free for one year here.

Start Managed PostgreSQL on Azure

• Go to the Azure portal.
• Select 'Create a resource'. In the search box, enter and select 'Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server'. Hit create.
• Create a new resource group named jakartaee-cafe-group-<your suffix> (the suffix could be your first name such as "reza"). Specify the Server name to be jakartaee-cafe-db-<your suffix> (the suffix could be your first name such as "reza"). Choose PostgreSQL authentication. Specify the login name to be postgres. Specify the password to be Secret123!. Click Next to go to the Networking tab.
• Enable access to Azure services.
• Create the resource. It will take a moment for the database to deploy and be ready for use.
• In the portal home, go to 'All resources'. Find and click on jakartaee-cafe-db-<your suffix>. Open the Settings -> Server parameters panel. Set the 'require_secure_transport' parameter to 'OFF', and then hit 'Save'.

Once you are done exploring the demo, you should delete the jakartaee-cafe-group-<your suffix> resource group. You can do this by going to the portal, going to resource groups, finding and clicking on jakartaee-cafe-group-<your suffix> and hitting delete. This is especially important if you are not using a free subscription! If you do keep these resources around (for example to begin your own prototype), you should in the least use your own passwords and make the corresponding changes in the demo code.

Setup Managed JBoss EAP

• Go to the Azure portal.
• Select 'Create a resource'. In the search box, enter and select 'Web App'. Hit create.
• Select jakartaee-cafe-group-<your suffix> as the resource group and enter jakartaee-cafe as application name. Choose Java 17 as your runtime stack and JBoss EAP 8 as the Java web server stack (since the application uses Jakarta EE 10, this is the most appropriate JBoss EAP version). You can optionally pick the free tier for your pricing plan.
• Click next until you reach the monitoring tab. If you want faster deployment, turn off Application Insights. You should definitely do this for the free tier where compute capacity is very limited.
• Finish creating the resource.

Setup Environment Variables

• In the portal home, go to 'All resources'. Find and click on the App Service instance named jakartaee-cafe. Open the Settings -> Environment variables panel.
• Add the following variables: DB_HOST=jakartaee-cafe-db-<your suffix>.postgres.database.azure.com, DB_USERNAME=postgres, DB_PASSWORD=Secret123!.

Setup Health Check

• Note that you cannot set up a health check on the free tier, so skip this if you chose the free tier.
• In the portal home, go to 'All resources'. Find and click on the App Service instance named jakartaee-cafe. Open the Monitoring -> Health check panel.
• Select 'Enable'. For the path enter '/rest/coffees'. Hit save.

Setup Scale Out

• Note that you cannot use scale out on the free tier, so skip this if you chose the free tier.
• In the portal home, go to 'All resources'. Find and click on the App Service instance named jakartaee-cafe. Open the Settings -> Scale out panel.
• Select automatic. Hit save.

Install the Azure CLI

• In order to deploy the application, we will need to install the Azure CLI.

• Open a console and execute the following to log onto Azure.

   az login
  

Start the Application on Managed JBoss EAP

The next step is to get the application up and running on managed JBoss EAP. Follow the steps below to do so.

• Start VS Code.
• Get the jakartaee-cafe application into the IDE. In order to do that, go to File -> Open Folder. Then browse to where you have this repository code in your file system and select jakartaee-cafe. Let VS Code set the folder up as a Java project when prompted.
• Once the application loads, open the pom.xml file and replace occurrences of reza with <your suffix>.
• You should do a full Maven build by going to the Maven panel, right clicking Jakarta EE Cafe and selecting "clean" and then "package".
• You should note the pom.xml. In particular, we have included the configuration for the Azure Maven plugin we are going to use to deploy the application to managed JBoss EAP:

<plugin>
    <groupId>com.microsoft.azure</groupId>
    <artifactId>azure-webapp-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.13.0</version>
    <configuration>
        <appName>jakartaee-cafe</appName>
        <resourceGroup>jakartaee-cafe-group-reza</resourceGroup>
        <javaVersion>Java 17</javaVersion>
        <webContainer>JBossEAP 8</webContainer>
        <appSettings>
            <!-- Increase the timeout -->
            <property>
                <name>WEBSITES_CONTAINER_START_TIME_LIMIT</name>
                <value>500</value>
            </property>
        </appSettings>
        <deployment>
            <resources>
                <resource>
                    <type>lib</type>
                    <directory>${project.build.directory}</directory>
                    <includes>
                        <include>postgresql.jar</include>
                    </includes>
                </resource>
                <resource>
                    <type>script</type>
                    <directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/jboss/config</directory>
                    <includes>
                        <include>postgresql-module.xml</include>
                        <include>jboss_cli_commands.cli</include>
                    </includes>
                </resource>
                <resource>
                    <type>startup</type>
                    <directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/jboss/config</directory>
                    <includes>
                        <include>startup.sh</include>
                    </includes>
                </resource>
                <resource>
                    <directory>${project.basedir}/target</directory>
                    <includes>
                        <include>jakartaee-cafe.war</include>
                    </includes>
                </resource>
            </resources>
        </deployment>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

• It is now time to deploy and run the application on Azure. Go to the Maven panel and then Jakarta EE Cafe -> Plugins -> azure-webapp -> deploy. Right click and hit 'Run'.
• Keep an eye on the console output. You will see the application deployment progress. It may take a while for the deployment to complete.
• Once successfully deployed, you can access the application through its public endpoint. To get the public endpoint, go to portal home -> 'All resources'. Find and click on the App Service instance named jakartaee-cafe. Go to the overview panel and copy the default domain. The application will be available at a URL like: https://jakartaee-cafe-suffix.azurewebsites.net.
• Once the application starts, you can test the REST service at the URL: https://jakartaee-cafe-suffix.azurewebsites.net/rest/coffees or via the JSF client at https://jakartaee-cafe-web-suffix.azurewebsites.net/index.xhtml.

Deploy using GitHub Actions

You may also deploy the application using GitHub Actions. The following is how you do it.

• In the portal home, go to 'Microsoft Entra ID' -> Manage -> App registrations -> New registration. For the name, specify jakartaee-cafe-principal-<your suffix> (the suffix could be your first name such as "reza") and hit 'Register'.
• In the portal home, go to 'Subscriptions'. Go to your subscription. Note down your subscription ID. Go to Access control (IAM) -> Role assignments -> Add -> Add role assignment. In Role -> Privileged administrator roles, choose 'Contributor'. In the Members tab, hit 'Select members'. Search for and select jakartaee-cafe-principal-<your suffix>. Finish with 'Review + assign'.
• In the portal home, go to 'Microsoft Entra ID' -> Manage -> App registrations -> All applications. Select jakartaee-cafe-principal-<your suffix>. Note down the tenant ID and client ID. Go to Manage -> Certificates & secrets -> Federated credentials -> Add credential. For the scenario, pick 'GitHub actions deploying Azure resources'. Fill out your GitHub information. Select branch as the entity type. Set the branch name to main. Fill out a name like jakartaee-cafe-credential-<your suffix> (the suffix could be your first name such as "reza"). Hit 'Add'.
• Clone this repository into your own GitHub account. In the pom.xml file, replace occurrences of reza with <your suffix>.
• On your GitHub repository, go to Settings -> Secrets and variables -> Actions on your GitHub repository.
• Click 'New repository secret'. Specify the secret name to be 'AZURE_CLIENT_ID'. The Value will be the client ID you noted down.
• Click 'New repository secret'. Specify the secret name to be 'AZURE_TENANT_ID'. The Value will be the tenent ID you noted down.
• Click 'New repository secret'. Specify the secret name to be 'AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID'. The Value will be the subscription ID you noted down.
• Go to Actions -> All workflows -> Main Build -> Run workflow -> Run workflow.
• When the job finishes running, the application will be deployed to App Service.

To-Do

• Use Service Connector