In this chapter, we will introduce you to deploying and running Storm in a hosted environment of a cloud provider.

In Chapter 2, Configuring Storm Clusters, you were introduced to the steps necessary to set up Storm in a clustered environment, and the subsequent chapters covered the installation and configuration of complementary technologies such as Kafka, Hadoop, and Cassandra. While most installations are relatively straightforward, the cost to maintain even a modestly sized cluster—in terms of the physical asset requirements as well as the time necessary to configure and maintain the environment—can easily become a burden, if not an outright blocker to the adoption of distributed computing technologies.

Fortunately, today there are a number of cloud hosting providers that offer services for on-demand dynamic provisioning of multimachine computing environments. Most cloud hosting providers offer a wide range of services and options to fit most users' needs...