The Jelastic Platform‑as‑a‑Service (PaaS) offering has been augmented with the addition of the NGINX web server in a move towards producing a generally higher level of performance, as well as built-in Layer 7 load balancing and content caching for hosted applications.
Claiming to be the "second most popular" open source web server in the world, NGINX also (allegedly) lays claim to being the fastest web server in the world. With a marketshare of 8.5 percent across all domains, NGINX powers 43 million domains and nearly 25 percent of the top 1,000 busiest websites including Facebook, Zappos, Groupon, TechCrunch, Dropbox, LivingSocial, WordPress, and Hulu.
Jelastic CEO Ruslan Synytsky says that his company's technology enables Java applications to be uploaded in minutes without changes to code or programming language and with no need to write for specific APIs. "Our customers need a Java cloud computing platform that creates the highest level of availability and efficiency for their applications. Adding NGINX as part of our technology stack provides those capabilities," said Synytsky.
"I'm very glad to see NGINX now readily available to millions of Java developers in preconfigured hosting environments," said Igor Sysoev, author of NGINX. "Jelastic creates new opportunities for existing and new Java hosting offerings and it is great news for developers that NGINX is now part of it."
Jelastic supports any JVM-based application including pure Java 6 or 7, JRuby, Scala, and Groovy. The Jelastic beta supports these SQL databases: MariaDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Non-SQL database support is provided for MongoDB and CouchDB. Supported application servers include Tomcat 6 and 7, GlassFish, and Jetty. Jelastic provides load balancing and caching through integrated NGINX software; as well as developer tools integration via Maven and Ant plug-ins.
Jelastic is also different from earlier Java PaaS offerings in that it will be available to Java developers through a global network of hosting service providers. Jelastic has been in test since mid-2011 with more than 1,500 registered developers and nearly 1,000 applications deployed.
