It's 6 months since I posted our last roadmap update and the team have been working hard to deliver what we promised at the beginning of the year and have released both our 191 and 192 releases since then. I therefore thought it was a good time to reflect on what we've delivered so far and what we've still got to do.

 

The term “Kubernetes” comes from the Greek “kubernan,” which means to steer or guide. You can think of Kubernetes like a pilot for apps that are stored and run together in containers and other forms of workload distribution software. The Greek “kubernan” was transformed over the years to relate to the term “Govern”, which is another helpful comparison when trying to understand the full capacity of Kubernetes.

 

Kubernetes is most commonly used with Docker managed containers, although it doesn't strictly depend on it. Kubernetes defines a Container Runtime Interface (CRI) that container platforms must implement in order to be compatible. These implementations are colloquially known as "shims". This makes Kubernetes platform agnostic so that instead of Docker you're free to use other platforms with corresponding shims, such as CRI-O or KataContainers.

Eclipse MicroProfile has just announced the release of MicroProfile 3.0. This version builds on MicroProfile 2.2, including major updates to the Rest Client, and introducing breaking API changes to Metrics and Health Check APIs.

Summer is coming, and Payara Platform 192 is already here! Here's a sampling of the new features, enhancements, fixes, and updates you can expect in this release:

 

When using Docker images as the way to deploy your application, many organizations use Kubernetes to manage the containerized version of their application. This blog gives you a short overview of Kubernetes and how to run your Payara Micro application in a scaled fashion by either defining the scaling manually, or automatically by the Horizontal Pod scaler.

Nowadays, the concept of microservices is more than a simple novelty. With the advent of DevOps and the boom of container technologies and deployment automation tools, microservices are changing the way developers structure their applications. With this article, our intention is to illustrate that microservices are a valid option for Java/Jakarta EE developers and how Payara Micro is a robust platform to reach that goal. 

The 5.191 Payara Platform release brought with it support for MicroProfile 2.1. For those who don't know, the only specification updated in this version of MicroProfile was OpenTracing, going from 1.1 to 1.2.

There's a lot of noise revolving around Docker at the moment, and with the current industry focus on the cloud, there's a good reason for that.

 

I hope you would already know why you might want to use Payara Platform in your business, so in this blog I'm going to focus more on why you'd specifically want to use it with Docker in a "business" context. For a start, if you're unfamiliar with Docker, please refer back to our introductory blog: What is Docker and How is it Used with the Payara Platform for a primer.

MicroProfile

For those who did not come across Eclipse MicroProfile yet, let me give you a quick introduction. In 2016, a group of vendors and individuals started an initiative to optimize Enterprise Java for a microservices architecture.