AWS Elastic Beanstalk Now Supports Tomcat 7

We’ve added a second container type to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Version 7 of Apache Tomcat is now available for use and is the default for all new environments (you can still choose version 6 if you’d like).

Tomcat 7 includes functional improvements such as support for the latest versions of a number of standards including Servlet 3.0 (JSR 315), JSP 2.2 (JSR 245), and JSP-EL 2.2. It also includes some security improvements such as CSRF request prevention using a nonce and a memory leak detection and prevention mechanism. For more information, check out the Apache Tomcat 7 documentation.

The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse also supports a new server type called “AWS Elastic Beanstalk for Tomcat 7.” You will need to update your AWS Toolkit plugin using the Software Updates menu item in the Eclipse Help menu.

If your application can run on Tomcat 7 and you would like to migrate your environment, here is how you can do it with minimal downtime:

1. In the AWS Management Console, make sure the application youd like to migrate is selected.
2. Click on Launch New Environment in the top right corner.
3. From the Select an existing application version drop down, choose the application version that youd like to run on Tomcat 7.
4. From the Container Type drop-down, select the Tomcat 7 container that best fits your application and complete the rest of the wizard with the settings that work for your application.
5. Once the environment has launched, test your application and make sure that it works as expected
6. Move your existing domain name to point to the new environments URL.
7. Once youve verified that the domain name is pointing to the new environment, use the Actions menu for the old environment, to Terminate this Environment.

— Jeff;