Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint (CRaC) improves Java startup and warmup times, making it ideal for serverless functions, containers, microservices and other uses, according to Azul.

CRaC allows a running application to pause, snapshot its state, and then restart later, even on a different machine.

By saving the full context of the application process, CRaC reduces Java application startup and warmup times to milliseconds rather than seconds or even minutes.

"Improving startup and warmup times is a perennial concern for Java developers, and CRaC provides a powerful new approach for solving this challenge," said Azul deputy CTO and Java champion Simon Ritter.

"This produces a host of benefits. When serverless functions start faster, you pay less at scale. If your container takes less time to warm up, you need fewer instances to handle the same load from the beginning. When servers restart faster, you can perform more frequent updates to your application code and infrastructure. Taken together this means more efficient development and deployment of Java applications."

Micronaut product development lead Sergio del Amo said "CRaC has generated immense interest among the Java developer community and provides a compelling, resource-efficient approach for improving startup and warmup times.

"Azul is well known for originating this project, so it came as no surprise that they would also deliver the world's first production-ready builds of OpenJDK with commercial CRaC support."

Commercially supported Azul Zulu builds of OpenJDK featuring CRaC are available for Java 17 on Linux x64 starting with the April 2023 release, which is available here.

Azul plans to add CRaC capabilities for other Java versions in both Azul Zulu builds of OpenJDK and Azul Platform Prime during 2023.