Container Native Deployment

Container and Native Deployment

Choose JVM, AOT cache, checkpoint/restore, or native from measured requirements.

Container image

• Prefer Boot build-image tasks with Cloud Native Buildpacks for standard services.
• Preserve dependency, loader, snapshot, and application layers for cache reuse.
• Pin compatible builder/run image families and promote immutable digests.
• Run as non-root and use a read-only filesystem where possible.
• Inject secrets at runtime; never copy credentials into a build context or image layer.
• Configure graceful shutdown and platform termination timing together.

Runtime behavior

• Verify JVM memory and CPU ergonomics under real container limits.
• Expose Actuator liveness and readiness probes separately.
• Use a startup probe for expensive initialization.
• Keep writable paths explicit and bounded.

Native image and AOT

• Use GraalVM 25 or newer with Boot 4 native build support.
• Register narrow RuntimeHints for reflection, resources, serialization, JNI, or proxies.
• Respect the closed-world model: runtime bean topology and classpath cannot change.
• Review profile and conditional-bean behavior during AOT processing.
• Run native integration tests against the produced executable.

Supply chain

• Generate an SBOM, scan the final image, and regularly rebuild on patched run images.
• Sign and attest release images where the delivery platform supports it.

Examples

• See examples/good-dockerfile and examples/bad-dockerfile.

The good example uses Boot's jarmode=tools extraction in a builder stage. A normal Maven package does not create target/dependencies/ or target/application/ directories by itself.

Official sources

• Container images: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/packaging/container-images/
• Dockerfiles and layer extraction: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/packaging/container-images/dockerfiles.html
• Native images: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/packaging/native-image/

Gotchas

• Agent assumes a passing JVM suite proves native compatibility - run the actual native executable.
• Agent adds broad reflection metadata - use the smallest runtime hints possible.
• Agent bakes secrets into layers - inject them only at runtime.
• Agent makes liveness depend on remote systems - use readiness for traffic dependencies.
• Agent selects native only for fashion - benchmark startup, memory, throughput, and build time.
• Agent copies nonexistent target/dependencies directories - extract the packaged jar in a builder stage.