The urge to create a number of utility applications for personal and official use led to the use of Google App Engine. But Google App Engine forced us to stick to writing Java/Python code. After having worked in Groovy and Grails, working with Java makes you feel very old. But you have to resort to writing Java code if the cloud facilities of Google App Engine have to be used.
Working with Node.js took me to Cloud Foundry. Cloud Foundry is a cloud service provided by VMware that can be used to host Rails, Grails, Scala, Spring and Node JS applications. It’s in the beta version and available for free as of now.
You can create an account in Cloud Foundry and if you are working in Grails/Spring/Scala you will have to simply install a Cloud Foundry extension for the Spring Source Tool Suite (STS 2.9) and follow the instructions to deploy your application in cloud foundry.
I created a simple Grails application HealthyCoder, that I plan to use extensively for a number of assignments. After creating the Grails application you will have to install the grails plugin ‘cloud-foundry’ and use the cf-* commands to push/modify your application to the cloud foundry.
My sample application is available in this URL.