Overview
A typical request: an application team runs business applications on WildFly and on JBoss EAP 7, with no one to call when a server hangs and no plan for EAP 7 now that Red Hat's Maintenance Support for it has ended. AceMQ delivers production support and a written upgrade plan, scope and process, not a past result. AceMQ is an independent provider and sells no EAP subscription.
Challenge
WildFly is a community project, so the team has no vendor to escalate to. The EAP 7 servers depend on a paid Extended Life-cycle Support add-on for fixes. Nobody has a list of which deployments still import javax packages, which of Red Hat's EAP 8 removals affect the server configuration, or how the datasource pools behave when a database fails over.
Environment
A mix of standalone WildFly and JBoss EAP 7 servers on virtual machines and some in containers, each running several deployments against relational databases, with a JDK that differs from server to server.
Approach
AceMQ starts with a server and deployment inventory: version, JDK, configuration, datasources, thread pools and the packages each deployment imports. Support starts in parallel, with a 15-minute emergency response and a written root-cause analysis after each P1. The upgrade plan uses Red Hat's EAP 8 migration guide: the javax to jakarta rename, the removed subsystems and the order of waves. AceMQ plans and runs the server side and lists the application changes for the team's developers.
Solution
- Server and deployment inventory with versions, JDKs, configuration and owners
- 24/7 production support with a 15-minute emergency response and written root-cause analysis after every P1
- Review of datasource validation, pool sizing and Undertow thread pools against how the database fails over
- EAP 7 to EAP 8 plan: deployments sorted by javax references, server configuration mapped to its EAP 8 form, waves ordered with a rollback for each
- List of the application changes the plan needs, handed to the team's developers
- Runbook for the standard server configuration and for taking the next WildFly release
Outcome
The team receives a written inventory, an engineer on call for the application servers, a tuning review with ranked findings, and an EAP 8 plan that names each deployment, each configuration change and who owns it. The decision to move, stay or shift a web-tier application to Tomcat is made on that evidence.
Technologies
Java
Kubernetes
Docker
Prometheus
OpenTelemetry
Python
Kibana
