Red Hat JBoss Fuse has been the de-facto standard for building Java Web/RESTful services for over a decade. But how do you run it effectively in today’s Cloud-centric world? As you’ll see, an infrastructure-as-a-code and scalable/fault-tolerant approach are both critical for a successful deployment.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to:
- Build an environment in a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster in Azure.
- Package your Red Hat JBoss services into a Docker Container.
- Run your services in a scalable, highly-available cluster.
Building an Environment on a Kubernetes Cluster in Azure
To start, you’ll need an operational Kubernetes cluster. Read our blog to learn how to install a Kubernetes cluster in Azure.
After installation, run the Kubernetes Dashboard (kubectl proxy) and ensure the Kubernetes Dashboard UI (http://127.0.0.1:8001/ui) is working:

Packaging Your Red Hat JBoss Services Into a Docker Container
The typical Red Hat JBoss deployment process requires you to install Red Hat JBoss, configure Red Hat/Karaf features, and deploy your services (i.e., the developed *.jar files). You can automate the installation with the Docker file and get a delivery unit that is ready for testing and deployment to production.
Docker file:
# Use latest jboss/base-jdk:8 image as the base FROM jboss/base-jdk:8 MAINTAINER Evgeny Pishnyuk <maintainer-email@gmail.com> ENV DEPLOY_LOCAL_STORAGE=install ENV DEPLOY_CLOUD_STORAGE=https://your-cloud-storage-with-prepared-artifacts ENV FUSE_VERSION 6.3.0.redhat-262 RUN curl $DEPLOY_CLOUD_STORAGE/jboss-fuse-karaf-$FUSE_VERSION.zip > /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse-karaf.zip WORKDIR /opt/jboss RUN unzip jboss-fuse-karaf.zip -d /opt/jboss && rm *.zip RUN ln -s "jboss-fuse-$FUSE_VERSION" jboss-fuse # We turn on the default admin user. Please consider password RUN sed -i 's/#admin/admin/' etc/users.properties # We install components that we needed RUN bin/fuse server & \ sleep 30 && \ bin/client log:clear && \ bin/client 'osgi:install -s mvn:xom/xom/1.2.5' && \ bin/client features:install camel-jetty && \ bin/client features:install camel-xmljson && \ sleep 10 && \ bin/client log:display && \ bin/client 'shutdown -f' && \ sleep 5 # !Usually it is more affordable to use inheritance of Docker Containers and here will be a split point WORKDIR /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse COPY $DEPLOY_LOCAL_STORAGE/*.jar /opt/deploy/ # We deploy our service – we do it in different step to save time for building of Docker Image RUN bin/fuse server & \ sleep 30 && \ bin/client log:clear && \ bin/client 'osgi:install -s file:/opt/deploy/some-service.jar' && \ sleep 10 && \ bin/client log:display && \ bin/client 'shutdown -f' && \ sleep 5 # Add ports of your services EXPOSE 8181 8101 1099 44444 61616 1883 5672 61613 61617 8883 5671 61614 CMD /opt/jboss/jboss-fuse/bin/fuse server
Set up your Docker Image Registry (or use DockerHub), and configure your Docker to access the Registry.
We use commands “bin/client log:display
” in the Docker file to help ensure that the Red Hat reconfigurations and deployments were successful.
After this, the typical developer’s flow will be to build a Docker Container Image, tag the Image with a version, and push the Image to the Docker Registry:
docker build -t rhesb . docker tag rhesb pishnuke/rhesb:latest docker push pishnuke/rhesb:latest
Running Your Services in a Scalable, Highly Available Cluster
You have now successfully configured Kubernetes on Azure Container Service, and you have a Docker Image in a Docker Registry. Next, you’re ready to proceed with Kubernetes!
Basically, you will need to create one Deployment (for Red Hat nodes) and one Service (for a load balancer and publicly accessible IP) in Kubernetes.
To create the Deployment, go to the dashboard, and select “Deployment” in the left menu.
Click “+Create” in the upper right, and select the “Upload a YAML or JSON file” option.

Here is the Kubernetes deployment definition:
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: rhesb spec: replicas: 2 template: metadata: labels: name: rhesb spec: containers: - name: rhesb imagePullPolicy: Always image: pishnuke/rhesb:latest ports: - containerPort: 8040 - containerPort: 9001 - containerPort: 1099 - containerPort: 44444 - containerPort: 8000 - containerPort: 8001 - containerPort: 8101 - containerPort: 8888 - containerPort: 61616 - containerPort: 2181 - containerPort: 1527 - containerPort: 8082 - containerPort: 8088 - containerPort: 8090
Select Rh-deployment.yaml, and click “Upload”. Next, select “Pods” in the left menu. Wait until “rhesb-….” is ready. This should take approximately 5 minutes because the image is 2GB.

Then go to “Services”, click “+Create”, and select the Kubernetes service definition(rh-service.yaml). Ensure the “selector” attribute in the Service definition matches the “metadata” name of the Deployment definition.
Here is the Kubernetes service definition:
apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: rhesb spec: type: LoadBalancer ports: - name: service1 port: your_service1_port targetPort: your_service1_port selector: name: rhesb
Go to “Services” and wait until the new service displays an IP address. This will take a few minutes as the load balancer and rules are created.
You are now ready to test your service using SoapUI, or a similar tool:

While you can go into production with this Docker Image and a couple of Kubernetes yaml files, you should also:
- Choose an approach for managing environment-specific properties (for example, URLs and ports of services).
- Set up log shipping using Stash or the Azure Monitoring Agent.
- Add readinessProbe and livenessProbe (for each service) to Kubernetes Service definition to ensure you are not the owner of a cluster of all-dead nodes.
- Consider using Kublr to get more auto-scaling/highly available features out-of-the-box!