Payara Server Docker Image Overview

Overview of the usage and details of the official Payara Server Community Docker image.

Quick start

Launch a new Payara Server domain running in a container listening in port 8080 with the following command:

docker run -p 8080:8080 payara/server-full

Keep in mind the following:

  • The container starts the domain1 domain in the foreground so the server’s DAS becomes the main process.

  • The tini utility is used to guarantee that the server runs seamlessly as the single child process.

  • The server’s JVM process runs under the payara user.

Using a specific version
docker run -p 8080:8080 payara/server-full:6.2024.12

AMD64 & ARM64 compatible images are provided. The Docker client should automatically download the appropriate image for your architecture.

Other distributions

Besides the Full Profile version, the Payara Server Web Profile distribution is also available as a Docker Image under the payara/server-web name. The image for this distribution behaves the same as its Full Profile counterpart.

Specifying the JDK Version

There are 3 different, alternative versions of the JDK images:

  • The default version which is based on JDK11, uses no suffix.

  • The JDK 17 version, which uses the -jdk17 suffix.

  • The JDK 21 version, which uses the -jdk21 suffix.

To switch from the default JDK 11 based image to the JDK 17 or 21 compatible one, just add the corresponding suffix to the tag’s name like this:

docker run -p 8080:8080 payara/server-full:6.2024.12-jdk17

Exposed ports

The default ports that are exposed by this image are:

  • 8080 - HTTP listener

  • 8181 - HTTPS listener

  • 4848 - Admin Service HTTPS listener

  • 9009 - JDWP Debug port

Administration Details

To access the DAS' administration interface (either by remote asadmin commands or by using the Web Admin Console), just map the container’s Admin Service port when launching the container:

docker run -p 4848:4848 -p 8080:8080 payara/server-full

By default, the admin service will be secure-enabled, meaning that HTTPS communication will be used exclusively.

The default administrator user with access to the admin interface will use the admin/admin credentials.
If you plan to use this image in a production environment, make sure to update these credentials after the domain has started.

Installation Details

The Payara Server installation is located in the /opt/payara/appserver directory (identified by the PAYARA_DIR environment variable). The /opt/payara/ parent directory is the default working directory of the docker image.

The directory name is deliberately free of any versioning so that any scripts written to work with one version can be seamlessly migrated to the latest docker image.

Application Deployment

Deploy Applications from a Directory

The default entrypoint will scan the $DEPLOY_DIR directory (which defaults to /opt/payara/deployments) for files and sub-folders and deploy them automatically after the domain is started.

Any RAR files artefacts found in the directory will always be deployed first

To deploy your applications, you can mount this directory as a Docker volume mapped to a local directory that hosts your application artefacts.

The following sample command will launch a new Payara Server container and deploy all applications located in the ~/payara/apps directory:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v ~/payara/apps:/opt/payara/deployments payara/server-full:6.2024.12

Deploy Applications using a Custom Image

You can also prepare a custom image based on the official Payara Server Docker image and copy all application artifacts to the $DEPLOY_DIR directory. This way, you can re-package your applications in a simple distributable unit.

The following sample Dockerfile can be used to prepare a custom Payara Server image that deploys the myapplication.war artefact at runtime:

FROM payara/server-full
COPY myapplication.war $DEPLOY_DIR

And to launch the container, simply build and run the image like this:

docker build -t mycompany/myapplication:1.0 .
docker run -p 8080:8080 mycompany/myapplication:1.0

Configuration

Using Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be used to configure multiple settings of the Payara Server’s DAS before the domain is started. They can be either specified in a custom image’s Dockerfile, passed to the docker run command via the --env or --env-file arguments or modified by an init script before the startInForeground.sh script is executed:

Name Description Default Value

PREBOOT_COMMANDS

The name of the file containing commands to be executed before the domain is started. The file will not be modified by the Docker container

$CONFIG_DIR/post-boot-commands.asadmin and $CONFIG_DIR/pre-boot-commands.asadmin

POSTBOOT_COMMANDS

The name of the file containing commands to be executed after the domain is started. This is the file written to in the generate_deploy_commands.sh script. The file will not be modified by the Docker container

$CONFIG_DIR/post-boot-commands.asadmin

MEM_MAX_RAM_PERCENTAGE

Value for the JVM argument -XX:MaxRAMPercentage which indicates the percentage of memory assigned to the container that can be used by the Java process

70

MEM_XSS

Value for the JVM argument -Xss which controls the stack size

512K

DEPLOY_PROPS

Specifies a list of properties to be passed with the deploy commands generated in the generate_deploy_commands.sh script

PAYARA_ARGS

Additional arguments passed to the start-domain command that starts the DAS. Use with caution.

JVM_ARGS

Additional JVM arguments which will be used to configure the Payara Servers DAS JVM settings
Preboot and post-boot command files will not be modified by the Docker container.

The following is a list of variables used by the Docker image to configure the Payara Server domain, so it is not recommended to alter their values:

Name Description Value

HOME_DIR

The home directory for the payara user

/opt/payara

PAYARA_DIR

The root directory of the Payara installation

/opt/payara/appserver

SCRIPT_DIR

The directory where the generate_deploy_commands.sh and startInForeground.sh scripts can be found

/opt/payara/scripts

CONFIG_DIR

The directory where the post and pre boot files are generated to by default

/opt/payara/config

DEPLOY_DIR

The directory where applications are searched for in generate_deploy_commands.sh script

/opt/payara/deployments

ADMIN_USER

The default username credential for the default administrator user

admin

ADMIN_PASSWORD

The default password credential for the default administrator user. Can only be set when the basic image is created

admin

PASSWORD_FILE

The location of the password file for asadmin. This can be passed to asadmin using the --passwordfile parameter

/opt/payara/passwordFile

DOMAIN_NAME

The name of the domain running within the container

domain1

AS_ADMIN_MASTERPASSWORD

The master password to pass to Payara Server. This is overridden if one is specified in the $PASSWORD_FILE

changeit

Executing Administration Commands at Domain Startup

It’s possible to run a set of custom administration commands during the domain startup. You can either specify the PREBOOT_COMMANDS or POSTBOOT_COMMANDS environment variables to point to the absolute path of a custom script file, or you can just copy the file to the expected paths (See above).

For example, the following sample command will execute all commands listed in the post-boot-commands.asadmin file inside the /local/path/with/boot/file directory mounted volume:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v /local/path/with/boot/file:/config -e POSTBOOT_COMMANDS=/config/post-boot-commands.asadmin payara/server-full

Alternatively, the same outcome can be achieved by defining a custom Docker image:

FROM payara/server-full
COPY post-boot-commands.asadmin $POSTBOOT_COMMANDS

Executing Custom Scripts before Domain Startup

If preboot command files are not enough, you can add your customized shell scripts to the ${SCRIPT_DIR}/init.d directory. This will allow you to modify the environment before the Payara Server domain starts.

Scripts added to this folder should be Bash scripts and they should end with the .sh suffix.

Scripts in ${SCRIPT_DIR}/init.d will be executed in the standard file order. If you need to start them in a specific order, we recommend prepending a prefix number to their name, for example, 01_script1.sh, 02_script2.sh, and so on.

As with the preboot command file, you may either create a custom Docker image that already contains the script files in question or you can also mount a volume mapped to the ${SCRIPT_DIR}/init.d directory instead.

The Default Docker Entrypoint

The default entry point of the Docker image is defined using the tini utility, to allow the DAS’s JVM to run as a single child process.

The default CMD argument for tini runs the bin/entrypoint.sh shell script in exec mode, which in turn runs the following scripts in order:

  1. ${SCRIPT_DIR}/init_1_generate_deploy_commands.sh: This script outputs deploy commands to the post-boot command file located at $POSTBOOT_COMMANDS (default $CONFIG_DIR/post-boot-commands.asadmin). If deploy commands are already found in that file, this script does nothing.

  2. ${SCRIPT_DIR}/init.d/*.sh: As described above, these scripts can be provided by you to run and configure the environment before the domain startup.

  3. ${SCRIPT_DIR}/startInForeground.sh. This script starts the domain in the foreground, in a manner that allows the JVM to be controlled by the docker host.

Browsing the Container

You can override the default entrypoint if needed to test or browse the container to examine that everything’s in place. The following command will start the container at a bash prompt, without starting the domain.

docker run -p 8080:8080 -it payara/server-full bash