In accordance with an embodiment, systems and methods for session handling in a multitenant application server environment are provided. The ability to replicate a session is important but equally so is the ability to ensure the session is successfully deserialized on some server in order to serve the request. After a server has been shut down, the front end can fail over the request to one of the remaining server members in a cluster. Once the server receives the request it can attempt to grab the session from a server that holds a copy of that session. When a patched or unpatched server attempts to load the session that originated from a server of the opposite state, it can fail to deserialize the session, and inform the traffic director of severs in the cluster that are capable of deserializing the session.