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Payara

Payara is an open-source Jakarta EE application server and enterprise runtime platform derived from GlassFish and maintained by Payara Services.

  • Jakarta EE-compatible application server and runtime (application platform)
  • Supports deployment of enterprise Java applications, microservices, and APIs (enterprise application runtime)
  • Provides clustering, high availability, and session replication features (application server infrastructure)
  • Includes administration, monitoring, and management tooling via web console and Representational State Transfer (REST) interfaces (operations and management)
  • Offers Payara Server, Payara Cloud, and Payara Micro distributions with commercial support options (deployment and support services)

More About Payara

Payara is an open-source Jakarta EE (enterprise Java) application server (application platform) designed to run and manage enterprise Java applications, web services, and APIs. It originated as a production-ready derivative of the GlassFish application server and is developed and maintained by Payara Services, which also provides commercial support and additional tooling around the runtime.

The core runtime, Payara Server (application server infrastructure), implements the Jakarta EE platform specifications, enabling deployment of applications built with technologies such as servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans, Java Message Service, RESTful and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) web services, and other Jakarta EE APIs as defined by the platform. It is suitable for classic monolithic enterprise applications as well as modular architectures based on standard Java EE and Jakarta EE programming models.

Payara Micro (microservices runtime) is a lightweight distribution of the platform for running Java microservices and thin WAR deployments. It is designed for containerized and cloud-centric environments, supporting quick startup and simple command-line configuration while retaining Jakarta EE compatibility. This positioning aligns it with use cases that require smaller footprints and elastic scaling compared to a full application server domain.

Payara also provides Payara Cloud (cloud application platform), a cloud-based environment for running Jakarta EE applications without manual server management. Payara Cloud is described as an application runtime that abstracts infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and scaling, allowing teams to deploy existing Jakarta EE applications with minimal changes while relying on the platform for operational concerns in the cloud.

For enterprise operations, Payara includes administration and observability features (operations and management), such as a web-based Admin Console, command-line tools, and REST management endpoints for configuring domains, clusters, data sources, security realms, and application deployments. The platform supports clustering, high availability, and session replication (application server infrastructure) to enable horizontal scaling and resilience across multiple instances in on-premises (on-prem) or cloud environments.

Commercial offerings from Payara Services include enterprise support, security and stability patches, and long-term maintenance streams (support services). The ecosystem integrates with common Java build and deployment toolchains, containers, and orchestration platforms, enabling use in Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and Kubernetes-based environments. From a taxonomy perspective, Payara is categorized as a Jakarta EE application server and enterprise Java runtime platform, with variants for traditional application server deployments, microservices workloads, and managed cloud runtime scenarios.