So, in the case of a server being deployed to deliver mapping services, it should only contain the software necessary to deliver maps. The GeoServer documentation states that Java 7 offers the best performance, and so this is the version we will use.Ī well-designed production environment will be as lean as possible in terms of the resources consumed and the overall system footprint one way to achieve this is to ensure that servers do not contain any more software than is absolutely necessary to deliver its intended function. For example, Tomcat 8.0 now requires the use of Java 7 as a minimum.

The choice of whether to use Java 6 or 7 will largely be down to either personal preference or specific system limitations such as other software that have dependency on a version. The most recent version is Java 7 (also known as Java 1.7), and GeoServer can be run against this version of Java. However, the GeoServer project only supports the use of Java 6 (also known as Java™ 1.6) or newer. There are a number of different versions of Java available.

JDK, as the name suggests, is used to develop Java applications, while JRE is generally used to run Java applications (though JDK also contains JRE). This is because Java is available in two main packages: Java Development Kit ( JDK) and Java Runtime Environment ( JRE).

However, in all cases, the first decision we must make is what version of Java to install and with which package. The process to install Java will differ according to our target server's architecture. GeoServer is a software server written in Java, and as such it requires Java to be present in our environment.

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