Given:
- IntelliJ 11
- A project with Web and Spring facets.
- A remote Tomcat run configuration
There should be the Perform on ‘Update’ action option on the run configuration dialog, but there is none! How do I make it appear?
Here is my remote tomcat run configuration dialog:

The “on update” configuration depends on the artifact type your are deploying on the server and if the server is local or remote.
Check that you first selected the artifact to deploy, then the on update configuration should become visible.
From jetbrains documentation:
HIH