GemFire: Oracle JDK 8 compatibility issues when using TLSv1.3 with versions prior to 9.15.0

Products

• VMware Tanzu Gemfire

Issue/Introduction

Customer applications may experience thread hangs when closing socket connections to a GemFire cluster under the following conditions:

• Oracle JDK version 8 update 261 or newer
• GemFire versions prior to 9.15.0
• TLS v1.3

The issue is caused by a lock synchronization bug described in the Oracle bug system:
https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8219991
https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8253471

Requests for fixing this issue should be directed to the Oracle JDK team.   

Note that TLSv1.3 is enabled by default in update 341, so these later JDK versions should be completely avoided with GemFire versions prior to 9.15.0 until these issues are fixed by Oracle.

Environment

Product Version: 9.10
OS: All with Oracle JDK 8

Resolution

Customers may avoid these errors using one of the following approaches:

1. The bug is not present in OpenJDK so switching from Oracle to OpenJDK will prevent any issues.
2. Upgrading to GemFire 9.15.0 before upgrading to Oracle JDK 8 update 261 or newer.
3. Configuring TLS v1.2 explicitly

This KB article is being shared to protect our customers from this issue with the Oracle JDK.