Red Hat Adds Cloud-Native Quarkus Runtime for Java Applications

Red Hat is making a version of its Quarkus runtime for deploying Java applications on Kubernetes that doesn’t require a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available as part of its Red Hat Runtimes subscription service.

In addition, Red Hat Runtimes add support for cross-site replication between Data Grid clusters running within a Red Hat OpenShift environment based on Kubernetes. That capability makes it possible to synchronize pools of data across multiple OpenShift clusters running in different geographies. A Data Grid Operator has also been enhanced to autoscale cluster nodes in OpenShift depending on the memory consumption of the individual nodes.

James Falkner, a technology evangelist for Red Hat, says there is now a cloud-native instance of Quarkus that can be deployed on a much lighter-weight version of a virtual machine. Red Hat is able to provide that capability using Mandrel, which is based on a high-performance Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and Java Development Kit (JDK) created by Oracle. GraalVM produces executables that run natively. Mandrel is essential in an instance of OpenJDK packaged with a GraalVM image. That combination makes it possible for GraalVM to compile native binaries for Java applications deployed on Quarkus.

Falkner says over time Red Hat expects about half of the developers deploying Java applications on Red Hat OpenShift will opt for the instance of Quarkus based on GraalVM. The other half will prefer to maintain full compatibility with Java applications running on JVMs that provide capabilities such as garbage collection that are not required by many cloud-native applications.

In either case, developers who have invested in acquiring Java skills will be able to build and deploy their applications on Kubernetes clusters, including Java developers that have adopted the Spring framework from VMware. Quarkus provides application programming interface (API) compatibility with up to version 2.2.6 of the Spring Boot framework as well.

Red Hat has also added support for the Java Flight Recorder in both the Red Hat distribution of OpenJDK 8 and 11.

In general, Falkner says there is a renaissance occurring within the Java community as multiple organizations participate more proactively in the development of open source Java platforms. As part of that evolution, many Java developers are looking to deploy applications on Kubernetes platforms that are starting to be deployed more widely in enterprise IT environments. Right now, however, Falkner says Red Hat is not interested in contributing Quarkus to an open source consortium.

Red Hat Runtimes provides a subscription service through which developers are provided access to multiple runtimes that developers can employ as they best see fit. Increasingly, many of those developers are employing multiple types of runtimes within the same application.

It’s not quite clear at what rate Java applications will be deployed on Kubernetes. However, as Java developers discover that Kubernetes essentially fulfills the original deploy anywhere promise of Java the number of Java applications deployed on Kubernetes should substantially increase. The challenge now is finding the most efficient way to deploy and operationalize fleets of Kubernetes clusters at scale.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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