You may have heard about the just announced SpringSource Cloud Foundry and how it is based on the CloudTools project, that includes a Maven plugin to deploy Java EE applications to Amazon EC2, starting the images as part of the build process.
Some time ago I started another Maven plugin, the Amazon EC2 Maven plugin, which allows you to start and stop EC2 AMIs as part of your build process. Unlike CloudTools, it’s a lower level plugin that can start any AMI, a very different goal.
My use case? starting Selenium Grid Remote Control images for different environments and browsers before the integration tests start, wait for the images to be online, run the integration tests, and shutdown the images. Check my previous Enterprise Build and Test in the Cloud entry for more details.
You could also have your AMIs with your webserver, db,… pre-installed, start it, deploy using the Maven Cargo plugin to any container of your choice, and shutdown the image at the end of the tests.
The plugin allows all the configuration options than the EC2 API does, because it’s based on the Typica EC2 library. Start any number of images, associate elastic IPs, choose availability zones,…
Hope you find it useful.
Carlos Sanchez's Weblog 
Hello Carlos,
I am new to cloud computing but not new to maven and java development. I would like to deploy a simple app using cloud foundry or your maven plugin to Amazon EC2. Would you provide me with a step by step example that demonstrates this?
Thank you.
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