SonarQubecan be packaged as a WAR then deployed on Tomcat or Jetty.

Note that you must already know how to deploy a web application in the server of your choice. Check the Requirements page to get the list of the supported servers.

Quick Installation

The SONAR_HOME will refer below to the path to the directory where the SonarQubedistribution has been unzipped.

Installation steps are:

Edit SONAR_HOME/conf/sonar.properties as described in the standalone mode (Note that SONAR_HOME/conf/wrapper.conf is never used when deploying in application server).
Execute the SONAR_HOME/war/build-war.sh script (or SONAR_HOME/war/build-war.bat on Windows)
Deploy SONAR_HOME/war/sonar.war in the application server
Browse to http://localhost/sonar and follow the setup instructions

Note that:

the SONAR_HOME directory cannot be removed
the WAR file must be rebuilt when a configuration file is updated (directory SONAR_HOME/conf)
there is no need to rebuild the WAR when installing/uninstalling plugins or rule extensions
the user who runs Tomcat must have read and write access to the SONAR_HOME_DIR directory (to allow plugin installation from the Web admin console for instance)

Note that after having upgraded SonarQube, it is required to restart the web server.

Advanced Usage

Moving the SonarQubeDistribution or Deploying in Another Machine

If for any reason, the SONAR_HOME has to change (moving the SonarQubedistribution into another directory, generating the WAR and deploying it on different machines, etc.), you can override SONAR_HOME by setting the SONAR_HOME environment variable to the new path.

Injecting Environment Variables

You can inject environment variables in the SONAR_HOME/conf/sonar.properties file with the following syntax.

For instance, to inject the JDBC connection string:

  sonar.jdbc.url: ${env:SONAR_JDBC_URL}

This can be quite valuable to better handle production environments.

Increasing Memory Heap Size on Tomcat

A minimum heap size of 512Mb is required. To increase the memory heap size on Tomcat, set the CATALINA_OPTS variable before starting Tomcat:

CATALINA_OPTS="-Xmx1024m -Dorg.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl.LIMIT_BUFFER=true -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"