Introducing Payara Platform Enterprise’s Diagnostics Tool: Streamlining Troubleshooting and Issue Resolution

Originally published on 13 Mar 2025
Last updated on 13 Mar 2025

If you rely on mission-critical applications for your business operations, making sure they run at all times is a must. However, issues can arise for a variety of reasons. In such situations, swift and efficient resolution is critical.

When issues arise in a complex server environment, effective troubleshooting is a cornerstone of delivering reliable, high-performing enterprise applications. That’s why we’re excited to introduce you to the Diagnostics Tool. This is an innovative data collection solution designed to improve troubleshooting, issue resolution and uptime for Jakarta EE applications running on Payara Platform Enterprise.

What is the Diagnostics Tool?

The Diagnostics Tool within Payara Platform Enterprise is a purpose-built Command Line Interface (CLI) feature that empowers development and operations teams to quickly collect in-depth server and application statistics when issues arise. It captures on-demand a comprehensive snapshot of your Payara Server Enterprise environment, including detailed metrics, configurations and runtime data. The data is then bundled into a convenient ZIP file format, making it easy to share with Payara Services’ support team. Let’s have a closer look.

How Does It Work?

When an application issue or server performance anomaly occurs, diagnosing the root cause can often be time-consuming and complex. The Diagnostics Tool simplifies this process by offering:

1. On-Demand Data Collection: By using the collect-diagnostics Asadmin Command Line Interface (CLI) subcommand, the tool collects information from the server runtime and generates a detailed bundle of server and application data. These include:

Domain.xml configuration file
Server logs
Notification logs
Access logs
A JVM thread dump
A JVM heap dump
JVM report

2. Comprehensive Insights: The collected data includes vital metrics, as highlighted above. In addition, the collection of data can be targeted towards a specific server instance, deployment group or cluster. By default, the data are all collected from the Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) on Payara Server, and each instance, deployment group and cluster are configured in the domain.

3. Streamlined Sharing Capabilities: Once the diagnostic ZIP file is created through the collect-diagnostics Asadmin CLI subcommand, it can be easily transferred to Payara Services’ support team when raising a support ticket. Our expert can then use the insight for in-depth analysis and troubleshooting, streamlining issue resolution.

4. Data Security: The Diagnostic Tool can obfuscate the content of the domain.xml. If obfuscation is enabled, the tool goes through the .xml file and checks if there is any sensitive information, such as password field, URL, IP address or host name. If any of these elements are found, they are secreted. Note that any default elements, such as local host or default address 0.0.0.0 are never obfuscated.

By consolidating all necessary information into a single, shareable file, the tool eliminates the need for repeated back-and-forth communications or manually piecing together relevant data, saving valuable time. Currently, the media support response time for Payara Platform Enterprise customer seeking assistance is one of the shortest in the industry, at 0.4 hour. The Diagnostic Tool can help our team reduce ticket resolution time too, enhancing your experience.

Benefits of the Diagnostics Tool

The Diagnostics Tool provides more than just a framework for data collection —it’s a strategic enhancement to your incident resolution process. Here are the key benefits it brings to your team:

Faster Troubleshooting: The tool accelerates the diagnostic process by providing a complete and detailed view of your server’s health and performance, giving our service team everything it needs to identify and resolve issues quickly.
Improved Collaboration: Sharing the diagnostic bundle within a ticket enables our customer support experts to dive straight into the issue and work more effectively with your software development team.
Streamlined Resolution: By equipping the support team with all relevant data upfront, the tool helps minimize the time-to-resolution for incidents.
Enhanced Insight: Even beyond troubleshooting, the comprehensive data captured by the tool can offer valuable insights into server behavior and application performance.

Transforming the Support Experience

Payara Services is committed to providing world-class support to ensure your Jakarta EE applications run smoothly on our runtimes. The Diagnostics Tool enhances this commitment by enabling a proactive and collaborative approach to issue resolution. It reduces the overhead associated with manual data gathering while equipping both your team and our service team with the tools to maximize application performance and uptime.

Get Started with the Diagnostics Tool

If you’re using Payara Platform Enterprise, the Diagnostics Tool is included in your technology suite. For additional information on how to leverage it, feel free to get in touch with our team.

If you are not using Payara Platform Enterprise yet, but are interested in adding this essential element to your troubleshooting toolkit, sign up for a free trial of our application server technologies now and experience how the Diagnostic Tool can power up your Jakarta EE applications.