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What is Payara Platform Community?
Payara Platform Community offers open source server runtimes for containerized Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications.
Payara Server Community is a cloud-native, innovative open source middleware platform that supports Jakarta EE (Java EE) applications in any environment: on premise, in the cloud or hybrid.
Payara Micro Community is the open source, lightweight middleware platform of choice for containerized Jakarta EE (Java EE) application deployments. Less than 70MB, Payara Micro requires no installation, configuration or code rewrites.
Payara Server is compatible with Eclipse MicroProfile and is a Jakarta EE compatible implementation.
What is Payara Platform Enterprise?
Payara Platform Enterprise is stable, supported software designed for mission critical systems in production and containerized Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications.
Payara Server Enterprise is a cloud-native middleware application platform supporting mission critical production systems with reliable and secure deployments of Jakarta EE (Java EE) applications on premise, in the cloud, or hybrid environments. A stable platform with monthly releases, bug fixes, and a 10-year software lifecycle, Payara Server is aggressively compatible with the ecosystem, cloud vendors, Docker, and Kubernetes.
Payara Micro Enterprise is the lightweight middleware platform of choice for containerized Jakarta EE (Java EE) microservices deployments. Less than 70MB, Payara Micro requires no installation, configuration, or code rewrites – so you can build and deploy a fully working app within minutes. Payara Micro Enterprise offers a 10-year software lifecycle, monthly releases, and bug fixes.
Is support available for the Payara Platform?
Payara Platform Enterprise is fully supported and stable software for mission critical production environments. If you’re running Payara Server or Payara Micro in production, you should use Payara Enterprise to benefit from greater security, stability, and support. If you’re currently using Payara Platform Community stream as a customer, we recommend switching to Payara Enterprise, but support is available for both Community and Enterprise streams.
What is the latest version of Payara Community?
The latest version of Payara Community, as of November 2022, is Payara 6 Community.
The Community product has no long-term support (only the latest version does) and thus Payara 5 Community is replaced by Payara 6 Community version.
With Payara 5 Enterprise edition you have a supported version with monthly releases until 2028. If you wish to remain on Payara 5 Server, you should make enquiries about Payara Enterprise here.
How is the Payara Platform licensed? Do I have to buy a license to run Payara Server or Payara Micro?
The Payara Platform is open source. You can run Payara Server or Payara Micro Community Editions without buying a license. Payara Platform Community focuses on rapid change and innovation, and provides a place for developers to play with the newest features of Payara Platform as soon as possible – but we can’t guarantee stability.
For customers using Payara Platform in mission critical or production environments, you should obtain Payara Platform Enterprise for security, stability, and the included support options, which is provided with a EULA license.
Is the Payara Platform open source?
Is Payara Platform Jakarta EE compatible?
Payara Server Enterprise 5 is Jakarta EE 8 Compatible.
Payara Server Community 6 is a Jakarta EE 10 Compatible.
How do I upgrade to the latest Payara Server Community or Payara Micro Community Edition?
To find out what’s the best way to upgrade your Payara Server check out our Upgrade Guide here.
What’s the difference between Payara Services and Payara Foundation?
Payara Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation that owns and protects Payara Server’s and Payara Micro’s code, trademark and documentation, ensuring the continued development and maintenance of Payara Server as open source software. Payara Services Ltd on the other hand is a private company and a major contributor to the development and engineering effort of the Payara Server open source project and the Payara Foundation.
What is the relationship between Payara Server and GlassFish Open Source Edition?
Payara Server is derived from the upstream GlassFish source tree with our own enhancements and fixes. Payara and Payara Server are not affiliated with, maintained, authorized, endorsed or sponsored by Oracle or any of its affiliates.
How is Payara Server better than GlassFish?
On top of the regular monthly releases with bug fixes and patches, Payara Server has a lot of new tools and features that are not present in GlassFish. See our GlassFish vs Payara Server page here for more details and features comparison.
Where can I find Payara Server and Payara Micro documentation?
The Payara Server and Payara Micro documentation is available here.
How can I contribute?
The Payara project is hosted on GitHub, allowing us to make use of the various tools GitHub has integrated for managing projects. GitHub also makes allowing the community access to view and edit the source code very easy and public. Have a look at the Payara Wiki to see the details of how to contribute and check out our Community page for some more useful info and links.
Can I donate to the project?
Unfortunately, at the moment we can’t accept any financial donations.
Payara Services is a profitable company, 100% funded by our customers with no external funding or debt.
What are your support SLAs included with Payara Enterprise subscriptions?
You can see the SLAs here. Our sales team will be happy to explain the available support levels, all other features of Payara Enterprise, as well as pricing & policies in more detail – contact us here.
What happened to the three release streams, Community, Features, and Stability?
In the past, Payara Platform offered three release streams:
The Stability Stream and Features Stream are now combined to form Payara Platform Enterprise. Instead of choosing between the potential instability of the Features stream, or having no features for 12 months in the Stability stream, customers receive the benefits of both with Payara Server Enterprise or Payara Micro Enterprise. Payara Platform Enterprise is designed for stability and security in production environments and new features are added to Payara Platform Enterprise after they have been thoroughly tested for stability in the Community version.
The Community Stream is now the Payara Platform Community version and features frequent releases to drive innovation. Payara Server Community and Payara Micro Community are dedicated to rapid change and innovation, giving developers a place to play with the latest features of the Payara Platform as soon as possible.
What happens if I’m a Payara Enterprise customer on the community stream?
We recommend all customers running Payara Server or Payara Micro in production move to Payara Enterprise – but we will continue to provide support for customers on Payara Community.
When do new features get added to Payara Platform Enterprise?
As a general rule, new features are first added to Payara Platform Community, where they are thoroughly tested and developed. Once a feature has stabilized and ready for mission critical production environments, it is moved to Payara Platform Enterprise. Some features are only available in the Payara Platform Enterprise, added once stability is confirmed.
What is the Payara Enterprise versioning system?
Payara Enterprise uses a three component semantic-like versioning convention.
Major Version Number . Minor Version Number . Patch Version Number
Payara Platform 5.20.0 = Major Version 5, Minor Version 20, Patch 0
Major Version numbers will start from 5 (the current major version of Payara Platform) and only increment by 1 when a new major version (E.g Payara 6) is released. Fundamental changes (e.g. Javax to Jakarta breaking change) will only be released in Major Versions.
Customers should expect changes to their applications and configuration scripts to move to a Major version.
Minor Version numbers will start from 20 (the year that Payara Enterprise and Community versions diverge) and increment by 1 quarterly. These version changes will introduce significant features once the features have been thoroughly tested in the Community version and are deemed stable.
Features introduced during a minor version change are backwards compatible with previous minor releases .
You should not need to change applications and configuration scripts to move to a minor version.
Patch Version numbers will start from 0 and as a minimum increment monthly. These version changes will introduce bug fixes and patches. The Patch Version number will reset to 0 on a Minor Version release.
If you receive a hot fix, a customer-specific version of the software adds an additional 4th level number to reflect the hot fix.
There is no need to change applications and configuration scripts to move to a patch version.
How do I calculate how many servers I need to buy?
Payara Enterprise support services pricing is calculated per core and 12 month annual subscriptions are available – contact our Sales Team for more information .
What are your long term plans for Payara Enterprise?
We have a 10-Year Payara Software Lifecycle policy in place, which ensures longevity of your investment in Payara Platform Enterprise. It provides you with 10 years of support and a well-defined lifecycle model, maintaining stability of your Payara Server or Payara Micro production environment.
Payara has a number of long-term Enterprise customers. Large, multinational and well-funded organisations including BMW Group, iTAC and Rakuten decided to invest in Payara Platform Enterprise to use it in their complex production environments. If you would like to find out more or request some customer references, please contact us directly.
How do I upgrade to the latest Payara Server Enterprise or Payara Micro Enterprise Edition?
There are two valid methods of fully upgrading to a new release of Payara Server, described in our documentation here. To upgrade Payara Micro, you just need a new version of the Payara Micro JAR file – no installation required.
What is OpenJDK?
OpenJDK is an open source implementation of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Development Kit (JDK). OpenJDK is available for free with a GNU General Public license. Since OpenJDK 9, the OpenJDK code base is used for almost all JVM versions.
There are many available OpenJDK builds, including: Azul Zulu, Amazon Corretto, RedHat, IBM, AdoptOpenJDK, Oracle and others.
What is Azul Platform Core?
Azul Platform Core is a tested, certified build of OpenJDK that is compliant with the Java SE standard for Java SE 9, 8, and 7.
Do I have to use Zulu JDK with Payara Platform Enterprise?
No, you can use any other supported JDK with Payara Server and Payara Micro. However, if you buy Payara Enterprise, you can benefit from Payara’s partnership with Azul, providing you with access to Azul Platform Core – Fully Supported Builds of OpenJDK – with Payara Server and Payara Micro, for no extra cost.
Is Payara bundling Azul Platform Core with Payara Server?
The Zulu JDK will not be bundled in the same downloadable artefact, but Payara will make Azul Platform Core available as a separate download for all Payara Enterprise customers.
As a Payara Enterprise customer, where do I download Zulu from?
Payara Customers with Payara Platform Enterprise subscriptions should download Zulu and Payara Server directly from Payara to be sure that they are getting all the latest security updates and fixes.
What Java versions does Payara support?
Private, updated builds of Java 7 will be available through Payara Platform Enterprise for the lifetime of Payara Server 4.x and updated builds of Java 8 will be available for the lifetime of Payara Server 5.x, so customers can plan for the future safely. Since access to Azul Platform Core is one of Payara Platform Enterprise features, Enterprise customers will maximise their investment by downloading those builds from Payara’s repository.
Can I raise JDK tickets in the same way as Payara Server?
Yes, we provide full support for Azul Platform Core backed by Azul support. Our Support Engineers will work with you and Azul support to resolve any JDK issues.
Can I use Azul Platform Core on systems without Payara and get support?
No, support for Azul Platform Core is only provided under your Payara Enterprise contract when used with Payara Platform Enterprise.
Can you use Payara Server / Payara Micro with Spring?
Yes, you can! To find out more, check out our blog posts on using Payara Micro with Spring Boot here ; there is also a very interesting JavaOne presentation video ‘Spring Boot for the Java EE Developer’ where Philip Webb ( Pivotal) is using Payara Server with Spring Boot.
Do you provide Docker Images for Payara Server?
Of course! We maintain Docker Images for both Payara Server Enterprise and Payara Micro Enterprise, they are available here.
We have Docker Images for Payara Platform Community Edition as well, but they are maintained for the current release only.
For user guides, videos, datasheets, and blog posts related to using Docker with the Payara Platform, visit our Docker Solutions Page.
What is with the name Payara?
Payara is a bad-ass fish from Venezuela (just Google it) – we thought it was appropriate! It also means we can have some cool branding and swag 😉
What is Jakarta EE?
Jakarta EE is a community-driven open source project and the future of cloud native Java. It’s a set of specifications that extends Java SE to modernize your enterprise applications with enterprise features such as distributed computing and web services. Jakarta EE specifications are either grouped into a platform specification (Full or Web Platform) or can be an individual specification.
Jakarta EE compatibility ensures application portability, security, stability, and resiliency. Payara Services was a founding member of the Jakarta EE project and Payara Server is a Jakarta EE compatible implementation.
What is MicroProfile?
MicroProfile was created in 2016 and is an open source Eclipse project that provides a collection of specifications designed to help developers optimize Enterprise Java for a microservices architecture.
MicroProfile specifies a collection of Java EE APIs and technologies which together form a core baseline microservice that aims to deliver application portability across multiple runtimes.
Payara Services was a founding member of the MicroProfile project and both Payara Server and Payara Micro are MicroProfile compatible implementations.
What is the Eclipse Foundation?
The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse Projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services. The Eclipse Foundation’s purpose is to advance open source projects and cultivate communities and business ecosystems.
What is EE4J?
Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J) was the top level project in the Eclipse Foundation for all the projects leading to the creation of the standards that would form the base for Jakarta EE.
Eclipse Enterprise for Java was an open source initiative to create standard APIs, implementations of those APIs, and technology compatibility kits for Java runtimes that enable development, deployment, and management of server-side and cloud-native applications.
