No Nonsense Guide to JVM Implementations: OpenJDK, OpenJ9, GraalVM

Even though Payara works with OpenJDK iterations, we pride ourself on our ‘Right Use Case, Right Solution’ approach.

After the success of Explaining Microservices: No-Nonsense Guide for Decision Makers, we realised there is an appetite for clear, concise guides explaining core industry topics.

In this guide we discuss the positives and negatives of OpenJDK, GraalVM and OpenJ9.

Your decision will be guided by what other technologies you want to integrate with – for example, if you are using Azure, you may want the Microsoft OpenJDK, or Dragonwell with Alibaba Cloud. A need for lower memory usage may lead you to OpenJ9 – or maybe you were using it before Dynamic Archive was in the OpenJDK and see no reason to change. If polyglot programming is important to you, perhaps GraalVM is your solution. There is no single right answer. Make sure to have a good look around to choose the optimal JVM installation for your use case.

Have a read to find out what will work for you.