Web start is no longer supported in Java 11/OpenJDK 11. The Java Web Start Docs docs say
Java Web Start uses HTTP for communication between the client and the server. You can use a standard web server to host an application. If you require additional services, such as version-based downloading, incremental updates, or pack200 compression for your applications, the web server will need to support servlets or Java Server Pages. A sample servlet implementing these features is provided in the samples directory of the JDK.
From what I understand on the above documentation. It doesn't matter what Java version the web server is running. So my app would still work as long as the client machine is running Java 8. Did I understand it correctly? Thank you.
Yes, it doesn't matter. Client's Java client communicates with server using HTTP protocol. So JNLP/Jar files can be hosted on any HTTP server, even not Java based, e.g. Apache/NGINX