Go to the admin console, Check the status of your server, Check the status of the application itself that you were trying to deploy. Make sure its started and ready to take requests.
Regarding why its taking long to deploy, I think its down to using Eclipse itself IMO. When redeploying app's if you deploy some of the files as libraries then the deployment will be much more fasted. If you are trying to include all the libraries in your EAR file itself then the server will take longer.