In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for providing an end-to-end lifecycle in a multi-tenant application server environment. A lifecycle manager enables configuration integration across different components, for example application servers, traffic directors or load balancers, and database or other components, which may have their own partition-specific configurations. In accordance with an embodiment, the end-to-end lifecycle infrastructure includes a plugin-based mechanism which enables the different components within a multi-tenant application server environment to use a lifecycle plugin to provide their own component-specific lifecycle functionality. In accordance with an embodiment, the system includes support for a tenant onboarding functionality, which can be used to onboard a tenant for a service to a particular partition. In accordance with an embodiment, the system supports the use of a global runtime within the multi-tenant application server environment.