Native Spring on Kubernetes with GraalVM

Spring has been the driving force behind enterprise Java for nearly two decades and continues to adapt, grow, and innovate. Native Images are the next chapter of Spring’s innovation journey, in the Kubernetes world. GraalVM is a project started several years ago by Oracle and allows you to ahead-of-time compile Java code to a standalone executable, a “native image”. How can I build Native Spring Boot applications with GraalVM on Kubernetes, starting faster and consuming fewer resources such as memory and CPU?

This workshop is designed to provide you timely information for understanding ahead-of-time compilation, native images, how to build them, use-cases for applying them, trade-offs and pitfalls, in the form of discrete, individually executable steps. An implementation of each step is being made available via a Github repository, which you would run during the session. The workshop does not assume any prior knowledge of ahead-of-time compilation and native images, and we will review key concepts as part of the workshop.

Topics included:

• Comparing ahead-of-time vs just-in-time compilation and understanding Native images
• Analyzing trade-offs and pitfalls
• Building JVM & Native apps in various ways
• Using modern standards for building container images with Cloud Native Buildpacks
• Analyzing container image layers
• Migrating a JVM-based app to a native app, step-by-step

We will be using Spring Boot 2.4.x for this workshop, as it is the version supported at this time by the Spring Native Beta release, together with the GraalVM 21.0.0.
If versions are being upgraded before the time of this workshop as planned, we will be using the latest versions available at that time.

If you are looking for an introduction to the best practices for running Spring Boot applications on Kubernetes, please consider attending “Effective Spring on Kubernetes” prior to this workshop. This workshop assumes you are already familiar with Spring Boot and Kubernetes.