The Adventure Begins

Azure offers many interesting opportunities. For a longest time, I had no reason or time to explore different stacks. Over time, Azure has changed the way I play the game, now it’s all about using the best tool for the right reasons.

Azure is a rich ecosystem of services (a.k.a. Lego Blocks), technology stacks and standards. If something is missing, we can usually overcome the challenge by bring our dependencies with us. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows us to work in a familiar environment. And Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings, like Azure App Service, allow us to focus more on delivering business value at a faster pace.

This adventure marks the first of many, where I will explore how I can use multiple stacks on Azure App Service. Let’s start with JSP. Azure Web App has supported Java for a while, and this post is all deploying that first workload. Let’s dive in!

Configuring Elevated Privileges

There are various scenarios that require us to execute applications with elevated privileges. It’s common for this requirement to surface during lift and shift efforts.

This configuration is done in the Service Definition file. It requires us to specify the Runtime Execution Context to elevated.

Runtime Configuration Template

This template uses the ProgramEntryPoint as an EntryPoint. Roles also support NetFxEntryPoint.

<Runtime executionContext="[limited|elevated]">
   <Environment>
     <Variable name="<variable-name>" value="<variable-value>">
      <RoleInstanceValue xpath="<xpath-to-role-environment-settings>"/>
    </Variable>
  </Environment>
  <EntryPoint>
     <ProgramEntryPoint commandLine="worker.cmd" setReadyOnProcessStart="true" />
   </EntryPoint>
</Runtime>