Install Tomcat 7 on Amazon Linux instance

In the previous post we spoke about how to build and configure Amazon EC2 Linux instance in terms of free tier offered by Amazon. Amazon propose list of services in scope of cloud platform where we can easily deploy and launch simple web application or test existing web solution. We've decided to use Amazon cloud platform as staging environment where Tomcat 7 web-server will be installed.

The process of installing Tomcat 7 web-server is very simple, furthermore Tomcat 7 included in the package repository of Amazon Linux AMI.

Install Tomcat 7

1. Initiate SSH session (as 'ec2-user') and connect to the Amazon Linux instance by it public DNS name.
2. Install Tomcat 7 together with standard Tomcat samples, documentation, and management web apps:

 sudo yum install tomcat7-webapps tomcat7-docs-webapp tomcat7-admin-webapps

3. Start/Sotp/Restart Tomcat 7 as a service.
startp:

 sudo service tomcat7 start  

stop:

 sudo service tomcat7 stop  

restart:

 sudo service tomcat7 restart  

4.  Add Tomacat 7 service to the autostart.

 sudo chkconfig tomcat7 on  

5. Add 8080 port to the security group associated with Amazon Linux instance using AWS Management Console.

6. Connect to the instance by public DNS name on port 8080.

Configure Amazon Elastic Load Balancer

Amazon ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances.

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the Amazon EC2 tab.
2. Select Load Balancer section from the left navigation menu and press Create Load Balancer button.

3. In the Load Balancer Configuration wizard set load balancer name and point 80 port to 8080 port and press Continue button.

4. Configure health check options, set ping path as /index.jsp and press Continue button.

5. Add instance to the load balancer and press Continue button.

6. On the last step review load balancer configuration and press Create button.
7. Select created load balancer from the list and wait while status updated.

8. Connect to the instance with a load balancer DNS name.