You can run glassfish as a daemon, like a mysql server on windows machines. Logout from the graphical console and let the service running in background.
You can administer it by running a browser at admin port (4848) remotely and do all the management tasks.
For the timer tasks, I recommend to use ejb timer bean. The lifecycle is an api to applications have access to glassfish lifecycle, but it doesn't look what you want.
Claudio Miranda
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