Payara Platform and Amazon Corretto

Amazon Corretto is a distribution of the Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK) provided by Amazon. It's free to use, comes with long-term support, is production-ready and supported in multiple platforms, which means that it can run in the cloud, on-premise, and on your local machine. With Corretto, you can run Payara on popular operating systems, including Linux, Windows and macOS. It is certified using Java Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) to meet Java SE standard and can be used as a drop-in replacement for most JDK distributions. 

Why Should You Use Corretto?

Since April 2019, you need to purchase an "Oracle Java SE subscription" to receive updates on Oracle JDK8. Starting with Oracle JDK 11, you have to acquire a paid commercial license if you don’t wish to use the GPLv2+CE, or if you are using JDK with an Oracle product or service. It is still free to use for individual use, development, testing and prototyping. Public updates and security fixes will be provided by Oracle for 6 months before they are stopped with the release of the next new version. (More information regarding this on "Java is still free".)

With Corretto, you can overcome all of these issues as it is free to use and does not have commercial license restrictions (until at least June 2023).

If you are running Payara Platform on Oracle JDK with a commercial license after January 2019, you might not have access to urgent bug fixes on JDK which could include a crucial security fix. Fortunately, with Corretto, you have a quarterly update that includes performance enhancements and security fixes. Similar to Corretto, Azul Zulu JDK also provides quarterly updates; however, unlike Corretto, if you are a commercial customer of Azul Zulu JDK, you get 24x7x365 support, continue to receive updates even after their equivalent OpenJDK build has stopped receiving updates, and receive out-of-cycle critical fixes (independent from OpenJDK).

If you are a Payara Enterprise customer your contract includes all of the commercial benefits of the Zulu JDK mentioned above. This is possible due to our partnership with Azul Systems. Payara Enterprise customers also, at the time of this writing blog, have access to enterprise builds of the Zulu JDK for versions 7, 8, 9, 11 and 13. You can use these binaries in your production environment with no restriction. Learn more on theOpenJDK support benefits through Payara Enterprise contract.

C:\Users\SusanRai>java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_222"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Corretto-8.222.10.3 (build 1.8.0_222-b10)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Corretto-8.222.10.3 (build 25.222-b10, mixed mode)