Java updates on Server/Portal etc. installs

[DavidPike]

Hi all,

Has anyone had any experience or advice on security updates/version updates to Java in-place as part of the Enterprise installs?

It looks pretty baked-in to <portal><server><datastore>\framework\runtime\jre\bin with quite a few configs etc.

I'm guessing a java version update is not recommended if not part of the install, however can anyone offer any astute technical reasoning or advice as to why, or potential workarounds, other than an entire server/portal version upgrade?

Many thanks for anything you can suggest.

[Scott_Tansley]

Putting the technology discussion aside.  I strongly believe you’d invalidate your support.  

Secondly, I had a client, with a very early release of Portal (pre-Enterprise) who did something similar and they couldn’t upgrade over the top and started again.

Personally I wouldn’t even consider touching the internal libraries.  We’ve seen recently, with the usage of Log4J and now the Spring framework (as examples) that there are many libraries with multiple interdependencies.  Without knowing all of those, it could cause many issues.

[JonEmch]

Underlining Scott's point here: ArcGIS Enterprise relies on specific versions of Java and other internal libraries to run its internal processes. Updating these will cause many internal issues, not to mention rendering your deployment unsupported. As for work arounds. you may be able to install secondary versions of certain libraries (think installing two python libraries) and using the one you require for your use cases.

   Hope this helps David!

[DavidPike]

Thanks Jon, I can see so many unknown fallouts from it. 

[DavidPike]

Thanks Scott, appreciate the experience.