Deploying a Spring Boot application to a cloud platform involves packaging the app, choosing a managed hosting service, and using Spring profiles to keep environment-specific configuration, like database URLs and credentials, separate for each stage.
Key Points: • Package the application with Maven or Gradle into an executable JAR, or a Docker image if the target platform is container-based. • Choose a managed compute service suited to the deployment style, such as AWS Elastic Beanstalk or Azure App Service for simpler PaaS deployment. • Create separate property files per environment, such as application-dev.properties and application-prod.properties, holding environment-specific values. • Select the active profile at deploy time via SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE so the correct configuration set loads automatically. • Store secrets like database passwords in the cloud provider's secrets manager rather than in property files, injecting them as environment variables.
Example: A team packages the app as a JAR, deploys it to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and sets SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod as an environment variable in the Beanstalk configuration, so the application automatically loads application-prod.properties with the correct production database URL.
Interview Tip: A concise interview answer is:
"I'd package the app, deploy it to a managed service like Elastic Beanstalk or App Service, and use Spring profiles with separate property files per environment to keep dev, staging, and production configuration cleanly separated. The active profile gets set through an environment variable at deploy time, and secrets go through the cloud provider's secrets manager rather than plain property files."