Starter Kit for deploying Tomcat-based Java solutions on Windows Azure

When working on migration of real-life Tomcat Java application to Windows Azure, the original Solution Accelerator (version from November 2009) was helpful in getting the migration project off the ground. However, some design choices and implementation of the original Solution Accelerator left a lot of room for improvements and optimization.

In particular, the requirement of deploying huge packages that consisted of JRE and Tomcat binaries as well as the actual Tomcat application (war file and often by accident also extracted java class files) was almost a showstopper, especially when the application was actively being developed and changed, so there was a need for frequent re-packaging and re-deployment.

I worked on addressing these problems and the result is publised on MSDN Code Gallery here.