Today I released a Python script called quick-deploy-java that makes it easier to deploy multiple Java applications (WARs) to a single Elastic Beanstalk instance.

Want to give it a shot? Clone the repo and follow along with this tutorial.

Step 1: Create a directory for your application and navigate to that directory

We’ll call this eb-test. We assume that you’ll do this from the same directory that this TUTORIAL.md file is located. If you do not the instructions later will need to incorporate the proper paths.

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$ mkdir eb-test
$ cd eb-test

Step 2: Run eb init to create your application in Elastic Beanstalk

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$ eb init

I used the following values:

Region – us-east-1

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Select a default region
1) us-east-1 : US East (N. Virginia)
2) us-west-1 : US West (N. California)
3) us-west-2 : US West (Oregon)
4) eu-west-1 : EU (Ireland)
5) eu-central-1 : EU (Frankfurt)
6) ap-southeast-1 : Asia Pacific (Singapore)
7) ap-southeast-2 : Asia Pacific (Sydney)
8) ap-northeast-1 : Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
9) sa-east-1 : South America (Sao Paulo)
(default is 3): 1

Application name – eb-test

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Enter Application Name
(default is "eb-test"): 
Application eb-test has been created.

Platform – Tomcat

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Select a platform.
1) Node.js
2) PHP
3) Python
4) Ruby
5) Tomcat
6) IIS
7) Docker
8) Multi-container Docker
9) GlassFish
10) Go
(default is 1): 5

Platform version – Tomcat 8 Java 8

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Select a platform version.
1) Tomcat 8 Java 8
2) Tomcat 7 Java 7
3) Tomcat 7 Java 6
4) Tomcat 7
5) Tomcat 6
(default is 1): 1

SSH – yes

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Do you want to set up SSH for your instances?
(y/n): y

Keypair – existing

I already had a keypair called aws-eb that I use. You can reuse an existing one or create a new one. It shouldn’t matter.

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Select a keypair.
1) aws-eb
2) [ Create new KeyPair ]
(default is 2): 1

Step 3: Create a testing environment

Since no applications are in this directory it will also launch the sample application. On my system this step took about 4 minutes.

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$ eb create testing

The output you’ll see will start with something similar to this:

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WARNING: The current directory does not contain any source code. Elastic Beanstalk is launching the sample application instead.
Environment details for: testing
  Application name: eb-test
  Region: us-east-1
  Deployed Version: Sample Application

Once it is done you’ll see this:

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INFO: Successfully launched environment: testing

Step 4: Validate that the default environment is running

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$ eb open

You should see a page in your web browser that looks like this:

Step 5: Deploy the first toy application by itself

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$ ../quick-deploy.py . ../example-applications/application1/
Building ROOT application...
ROOT application built
Deploying application.  This can take a long time.
Application deployed

This may take several minutes. Once it is complete you can verify that it is running by doing this:

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$ eb open

In your browser you should see a simple page that says something like this:

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This is application1 and it prints out a big random number 1555709810405276531

The random number at the end will be different.

At this point you’ve deployed a single application to a single instance. Now we’ll deploy three applications to the same instance.

Step 6: Deploy three applications to the same instance

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$ ../quick-deploy.py . ../example-applications/application1/ ../example-applications/application1/ 1 ../example-applications/application2/ 2
Building ROOT application...
ROOT application built
Building 1 application...
Building 2 application...
Deploying application.  This can take a long time.
Application deployed

This took about 4 minutes on my system. At this point open the application again:

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$ eb open

Make sure that the random number has changed. This shows that you’ve got a new instance of the application.

Now add /1 to the URL in your address bar and load the page. You should see the same message but again with another new number. This shows that you have a second copy of the application running at a new path.

Finally replace /1 with /2 in the URL in your address bar and load the page. You should see exactly this message in your browser:

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This is application2 and it just prints out this message

If everything worked out you now have an Elastic Beanstalk configuration that is running three applications in a single instance. application1 is running at the root and at the 1 path while application1 is running at the 2 path.

Step 7: Terminate your application

Make sure you terminate your application when you’re done.

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$ eb terminate

If you forget to do this step Amazon will keep your application running and keep billing you! If you want to be extra thorough go into the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console and delete the application completely.

You should also go into S3 and delete any files that are left behind. They don’t take up much space but keeping S3 tidy for when you start making real use of Elastic Beanstalk makes sense.