Add a jboss-app.xml file like this one in the EAR: <?xml version= "1.0" encoding= "UTF-8" ?> <!-- ~ JBoss, Home of Professional Open Source. ~ Copyright 2012, Red Hat, Inc., and individual contributors ~ as indicated by the @author tags. See the copyright.txt file in the ~ distribution for a full listing of individual contributors. ~ ~ This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it ~ under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as ~ published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of ~ the License, or (at your option) any later version. ~ ~ This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, ~ but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ~ MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU ~ Lesser General Public License for more details. ~ ~ You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public ~ License along with this software; if not, write to the Free ~ Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA ~ 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site: http://www.fsf.org. --> <jboss-app xmlns= "http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation= "http://www.jboss.com/xml/ns/javaee http://www.jboss.org/noschema/jboss-app_5_0.xsd" version= "5.0" id= "jboss-app-id" > <distinct-name> ${jboss.server.name} </distinct-name> </jboss-app> Exception thrown: 15:09:30,496 ERROR [org.jboss.msc.service.fail] (MSC service thread 1-5) MSC00001: Failed to start service jboss.deployment.unit."DS.ear".STRUCTURE: org.jboss.msc.service.StartException in service jboss.deployment.unit."DS.ear".STRUCTURE: JBAS018733: N'a pas pu traiter la phase STRUCTURE de deployment "DS.ear" at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService.start(DeploymentUnitPhaseService.java:123) [jboss-as-server-7.1.3.Beta1.jar:7.1.3.Beta1] at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1811) [jboss-msc-1.0.2.GA.jar:1.0.2.GA] at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1746) [jboss-msc-1.0.2.GA.jar:1.0.2.GA] at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) [rt.jar:1.7.0_03] at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) [rt.jar:1.7.0_03] at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) [rt.jar:1.7.0_03] Caused by: org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitProcessingException: JBAS011059: Impossible d'analyser "/D:/home/fme/jboss7.1.3/bin/content/DS.ear/META-INF/jboss-app.xml" at org.jboss.as.ee.structure.EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.handleJbossMetadata(EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.java:126) at org.jboss.as.ee.structure.EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.deploy(EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.java:67) at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService.start(DeploymentUnitPhaseService.java:116) [jboss-as-server-7.1.3.Beta1.jar:7.1.3.Beta1] ... 5 more Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at org.jboss.metadata.property.DefaultPropertyReplacer.replaceProperties(DefaultPropertyReplacer.java:110) at org.jboss.metadata.parser.util.MetaDataElementParser.getElementText(MetaDataElementParser.java:194) at org.jboss.metadata.parser.jboss.JBossAppMetaDataParser.parse(JBossAppMetaDataParser.java:103) at org.jboss.as.ee.structure.EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.handleJbossMetadata(EarMetaDataParsingProcessor.java:123) ... 7 more