Best practices for deploying Java webapps with minimal downtime?

Question

When deploying a large Java webapp (>100 MB .war) I\'m currently use the following deployment process:

• The application .war file is expanded locally on the develop

Answer 1

Not a "best practice" but something I just thought of.

How about deploying the webapp through a DVCS such as git?

This way you can let git figure out which files to transfer to the server. You also have a nice way to back out of it if it turns out to be busted, just do a revert!