Install tomcat on Google app engine? - google-app-engine

I am pretty new to this whole idea of cloud and started of with Google app engine. I was able to create the basic 'hello world' program.
When i tried to understand the difference between a cloud and a server I learned that Cloud is where you have an access to virtual instance created exclusively for you and you are free to choose and install software of your choice.
But I don't see such an option with Google-cloud/app-engine. What if I have a tom-cat based application server which I would like to deploy on a cloud? Will Google app engine be of any help or should I try other cloud service providers such as Amazon EC2, hp cloud etc?
/DJ

The cloud type that you are referring to is called Infrastructure as a Service cloud.
OTOH, Google App Engine is Platform as a Service cloud.
The difference is that IaaS are a bunch of virtual machines that you need to setup yourself (OS + app stack), while PaaS typically comes with it's own API, where you write your app against the API and the rest (sw stack + scalability) is taken care of.
AppEngine comes with it's own servlet container (Tomcat is also a servlet container), so from this standpoint you could use your code on AppEngine. But the problem lies elsewhere: AppEngine imposes a set of limitation on the apps:
app must use GAE provided databases.
app can not write to filesystem
app can not have listening sockets
requests must finish in 60 seconds (e.g. no Comet or WebSockets -> no push)
You might want to review the FAQ.

To add to Peter's excellent answer, note that Google also has an IaaS service called Google Compute Engine.

Regarding other cloud query-
Before you start with cloud you might once try other options. Currently deploying application in almost all services are very easy.
few of them are-
Jelastic , Heroku , rackspace , nimbus , openshift etc.
Difference between cloud and server is very well explained already.
Since you mentioned about tomcat based application , I have worked with Jelastic for the same and found very easy to implement.
http://jelastic.com/docs/tomcat
http://jelastic.com/tomcat-hosting
Try all possible option , it will help you more .

Related

How to deploy app on Google Compute engine similar to app engine?

I want to deploy and app using compute engine as my company does not provide access to app engine yet. Is there a way to deploy the same app using compute engine rather than app engine on google cloud. I have searched multiple forum but unable to find relevant answers.
Any help would be much appreciated.
With python3, I recommend you to write a Flask web application. Your web application will be similar on App Engine and on your compute.
However, you have several things to perform at the infrastructure level. I recommend you to have a look to managed Instances group with auto scaling and health check and Global load balancer.
Note: Because, it's not serverless, you have to pay at least 1 instance even if there isn't traffic on your app
Alternatively, you can have a look to GKE (easier VM management and scaling) and Cloud Run.

Google Cloud Datastore requires app engine?

Im creating a Node.js website that probably won't have loads of traffic, and was looking into cheap solutions to host the site. Came across Google cloud services offering free usage for their services with limits. A f1-mirco is more than enough for my needs, but I will happily pay for some usage if it goes over by any chance.
I wanted to setup a linux centOS 7 on GCE (which I already did), and run my application and REST API on it. Now here comes the problem.
I tried to use Google's datastore service, but it sprung an app engine instance and without it datastore won't work.
Is datastore entirely relying on app engine to function?? In the docs, it said if you use any of the client API, it requires app engine. What can I do to not use the client api and query data then? Don't want to use the app engine at the moment or datastore is just not for me then?
Thanks for any help!
Some of the underlying infrastructure of Cloud Datastore and App Engine are still tied together for creation, etc. So while creating an Cloud Datastore database also defines an App Engine instance for the project, it doesn't require you to use it. You don't get charged for App Engine either, unless you decide to deploy an App using it.
You should be totally fine use the Google Cloud Node client library on the f1 micro instance.

Google App Engine vs Tomcat

I was able to create the basic 'hello world' program.
When I tried to understand the difference between a cloud and a server I learned that Cloud is where you have an access to virtual instance created exclusively for you and you are free to choose and install software of your choice.Why Google App Engine(GAE) is used widely where as tomcat is not used. What are major differences between GAE and Tomcat?
Cloud is Google Cloud Platform at this case. App Engine is just one of their services.
App Engine is a platform to build your apps on top of it. A Platform As A Service or PaaS. It simplifies the process of building a scalable application, and you should use it when you understand what you really need and understand principles of scalable application.
Tomcat is a Java web container, and there're many alternatives. Google App Engine is using Jetty. You could actually use it with Tomcat by using Flexible VM, though it doesn't make much sense.
App Engine is not about web server, it's a set of services that helps you to build a scalable app. It includes Memcache, Datastore, Task Queue, Images API, deployments tools and versioning, CDN for static files, and most important automatic scale.
Actually you aren't limited to App Engine on Google Cloud Platform. There is more traditional service, like own server in the cloud, called Compute Engine. There you can run your Tomcat or anything else.

php with google app engine or amazon-ec2

What is better to code with php in google app engine or in amazon-ec2.
I think it is better in amazon-ec2 because they support datastore with php and google app engine doesn't, what do you think ?
While its not possible to access the appengine datastore, google has a new preview service for "cloud datastore", google "cloud datastore from php" and you will see how to use it.
You really cant compare AWS with appengine as one requires managing servers and scalability manually and their noSQL solution (dynamoDB) is a joke compared to google's datastore, for example in dynamoDB you must provision your writes beforehand and even if you are all day changing provisioning, it takes sometimes hours to propagate the new setting.
I had never use Google App Engine, but several times AWS systems, and sure, as AWS EC2 could be used as Linux Server Instance, I recommend you that provider. And coz' it seems that you use PHP, they have strong API for this langage. Have fun with AWS.

Upload java chat server

recently I have build a chat application with a client and a server it works fine on a virtual machine. But now I am stuck what I need to do with the server application?
Where can I upload it?
I had found that I can upload apps to Google(app engine) but I don't know the address of the server so the client can't connect to it...
please help me I hope my question is clear...
Google App Engine is a PaaS and cannot run any Java Server application that you have written.
So, you will have to make sure that you understand the App Engine platform and write applications using various services that are provided as part of the platform.
To get started, check the following: https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/gettingstarted/introduction
Google also has an offering called Compute Engine, that provides you with Linux VMs hosted on the Google infrastructure.
So if you are looking at VMs, where you want to host your application, you could look at that. You definitely have more flexbility with the Compute Engine but you have to deal with configuration, settings things up and more Administrative stuff.
Compute Engine is not free whereas App Engine comes with a generous free quota.

Resources