Java 17 and 21 Compatibility for PXF 8 on Greenplum 7

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

When installing or running PXF 8 on a Greenplum 7 cluster (specifically on modern operating systems like Red Hat 9), the service fails to start or complains that Java 17 or 21 is not installed. Use of Java 11, which was standard for previous versions, results in environment validation errors.

Environment

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum 7.x
• Platform Extension Framework (PXF) 8.x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 / Oracle Linux 9

Resolution

Intall Java 17 or 21 to meet the minimum requirements for PXF 8. While Greenplum 7 Database supports Java 11 for internal features like PL/Java, the PXF 8 framework requires a newer Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Follow these steps to configure the correct Java version:

1. Install OpenJDK 17 or 21 on the coordinator host, standby coordinator host, and all segment hosts in the cluster.
2. Locate the PXF environment configuration file at '$(PXF_BASE)/conf/pxf-env.sh'.
3. Update the 'JAVA_HOME' environment variable to point to the installation directory of Java 17 or 21. For example: 'export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk'
4. Synchronize the configuration changes across the cluster: 'pxf cluster sync'
5. Restart the PXF service: 'pxf cluster restart'
6. Verify the service status and the Java version in use: 'pxf cluster status'

Starting with PXF 8, Java 17 and 21 are officially supported and necessary for compatibility with RHEL 9 environments.