Okay, so I spent some time recently messing around with Liberty, you know, the application server thing. I kept hearing different things about which version or profile was supposedly ‘better’, faster, lighter, whatever. Got tired of just hearing it, decided I needed to figure it out for myself, for a small project I was tinkering with.
Getting Started – The Setup Grind
First thing, I had to actually get the different flavors of Liberty. I grabbed a couple of the main ones people talk about – like the basic kernel, the `webProfile`, and one of the newer Jakarta EE profiles, I think it was `ee9`. Just downloaded them straight up.
Then, setting up a test environment. Didn’t do anything fancy, just used my own development machine. Probably not super scientific, I know, but I just wanted a rough idea, something practical for my own use case. I figured I’d need a simple test application. So, I whipped up a basic servlet, something really lightweight that just spits back “Hello World”, you know? Didn’t want the app itself to be the bottleneck. The plan was to deploy this same simple app to each Liberty configuration I was testing.
What I Actually Ranked
I wasn’t trying to test every single thing under the sun. I focused on what mattered to me for my small project:
- Startup Time: How quick does this thing get up and running from cold? I hate waiting.
- Memory Footprint: How much RAM does it chew up just sitting there with my simple app? My machine isn’t exactly a powerhouse.
- Response Time (Basic): How fast does it serve that simple “Hello World” under a tiny bit of load? I used ApacheBench (ab) for this, nothing too crazy, just simulating a few users hitting it.
Getting the tests running wasn’t too bad. Mostly involved starting the server, letting it settle, checking memory usage using the system’s tools, running the ‘ab’ command a few times, and timing the startup with a simple script. Did this for each profile I downloaded.
Figuring Out the Results – The Actual Ranking Bit
After running the tests a bunch of times for each setup (to try and get some kind of average), I just jotted the numbers down. It wasn’t super complicated.
Here’s kinda how it shook out, based on my machine and my simple app:
- Startup Speed Winner: The bare kernel. No surprise there, right? It started up noticeably faster than the others. Felt almost instant.
- Memory Sipper: Again, the kernel. Used way less RAM just idling compared to the full profiles. The `webProfile` was next, and the `ee9` profile used the most, which kinda makes sense, it packs more features.
- Response Time: Honestly? For my super simple test, they were all pretty damn fast. The differences were tiny, probably not noticeable in a real-world scenario for such a basic app. Maybe with a complex app, the story changes, but for my “Hello World”, it didn’t matter much.
So, What’s the Point?
Why did I even bother? Well, like I said, I needed to pick something for a personal project. I wanted something lightweight and fast to start. Seeing the numbers myself, even from my rough tests, made the choice clearer.
For my needs, the bare Liberty kernel looked like the best bet. It was the fastest to start and used the least memory. Since my app was simple and didn’t need all the bells and whistles of the full profiles, it just made sense. If I needed more Java EE stuff later, maybe I’d switch to `webProfile`, but starting lean felt right.
It wasn’t some exhaustive benchmark, just my own practical look. But it did the job – helped me rank the options for me and make a decision instead of just guessing or going by what someone else said. Sometimes you just gotta try things out yourself, you know?