Developer Briefing — October 1, 2024

Executive briefing: Oracle’s Java SE support roadmap places September 2026 as the end of Premier Support for Java 11; Extended Support runs to September 2029. OpenJDK community builds typically stop around Premier end dates, leaving only vendor-backed binaries. Enterprises should target Java 17 or Java 21 LTS and validate JVM flags, garbage collectors, and TLS defaults before 11.x package streams disappear.

Risk timeline

Q4 2024: Inventory JVM-based services and libraries that hardcode Java 11 classfile targets; start Java 17/21 build pipelines and run jdeps to detect illegal reflection use.
Q1 2025: Shift CI containers and Kubernetes base images to eclipse-temurin:17 or 21; validate JVMTI agents (profilers, APM) and JFR event pipelines on newer runtimes.
Q2–Q3 2025: Run load and soak tests across G1/ZGC, CDS/AppCDS, and TLS 1.2/1.3 policies; uplift Spring, Jakarta EE, Micronaut, and Gradle/Maven plugins to Java 17/21-supported releases.
By Q2 2026: Complete production cutovers so compliance teams are not carrying unsupported JVMs into the Premier Support sunset.

Migration moves

Target compatibility: Raise --release or source/target flags to 17 or 21 and regenerate bytecode for internal and third-party libraries; resolve Unsafe and reflection warnings surfaced by --illegal-access=deny.
Cryptography posture: Confirm TLS 1.0/1.1 deprecations and stronger default cipher suites in Java 17/21 do not break upstream systems; update trust stores and mutual-TLS configs accordingly.
Monitoring and GC tuning: Re-tune heap sizing, container cgroup awareness, and GC logging since Java 17/21 change defaults (e.g., ZGC production-ready, Shenandoah availability in some distros).
Licensing and supply chain: Decide on vendor (Temurin, Corretto, Zulu, Oracle) for post-2026 support; update SBOMs and procurement notes to reflect the chosen distribution.

Compliance guardrails

Maintain vulnerability management exceptions for Java 11 only until migration plans are approved; map patch SLAs to vendor-support dates.
Capture regression evidence for frameworks moving from javax.* to jakarta.* namespaces and for any CDS/JVM flag changes that affect startup baselines.
Ensure build pipelines sign JARs and publish SBOMs (CycloneDX/SPDX) that capture the runtime uplift for downstream consumers.

Sources

Zeph Tech delivers Java LTS uplift runbooks spanning build pipelines, observability agents, and TLS posture validation to keep JVM estates in support.