Traditionally, Payara is an application server derived from Glassfish, the reference implementation of Java EE standards. The latest version to officially support Java EE 8 is Payara 5. As Payara is directly derived from Glassfish, it is quick to implement new functionalities defined in various standards.

Payara's opinionated approach to Java EE Microservices is named Payara Micro. The very basics of Payara's approach are the same as Spring Boot, WildFly Swarm, or OpenLiberty: to repackage an application server and omit functionality not required in the modern environment of Microservices, making the resulting package thinner. However, Payara Micro lacks the feature of rightsizing. Instead, all the functionality is packed in a single artifact, resulting in size under 70 MB. Payara Micro supports Java EE 8, together with the latest MicroProfile specification.

There are three major ways of running Payara Micro:

• Start the Payara Micro instance, then perform the deployment from a command line.
• Use programmatic startup, and run and configure Payara Micro at application startup.
• Create an Uber Jar with Payara Micro and the Microservice/application.