jPOS JVM options

/by @apr/

jPOS applications have a very low memory footprint, so we usually are fine running a simple

java -server -jar jpos.jar

But for applications more memory intensive (due to caching), such as jCard, the stop-the-world Full GC becomes a problem, freezing the JVM for as much as 5 seconds, or more.

If your response time is usually good but from time to time you have an inexplicable spike, I suggest you add:

-Xloggc:log/gc.log

that will create a nice log file that you can tail -f to get some insight into the JVM GC whereabouts.

If you see too many Full GCs, it's time to dig deeper. First thing to check is your -Xmx. If you set a -Xmx parameter which is high (say 1GB) but you don't set -Xms with the same value, the JVM will try to bring down the memory in use, even if you are not reaching the max value, causing frequent Full GCs. You may want to try:

Xmx1G -Xms1G

and check how the gc.log goes.

If that solves the problem, leave the JVM default options alone, you're done for now. If that doesn't solve your problem I suggest you change your GC implementation. My choice is the Concurrent Mark Sweep GC implementation that you can enable using:

-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalMode

This will probably solve your problem, but while you are at it, I suggest some of these:

jPOS' Q2 forces a full GC (calling System.gc()) when re-deploying jars in the deploy/lib directory. You could be using RMI that also initiates a distributed GC calling System.gc() too, or an operator could be fascinated by the GC button in his JMX console, so you want to prevent a Full GC in those situations, you do that using:

-XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrentAndUnloadsClasses

If you care about processing transactions fast after a restar, you may set:

-XX:+TieredCompilation

and to get some latest JVM optizations:

-XX:+AggressiveOpts

The full list of my jCard JAVA_OPTS p0rn is:

java -server
-Dappname=jCard
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote
-Xloggc:log/gc.log
-Xmx1G -Xms1G
-XX:+ExplicitGCInvokesConcurrentAndUnloadsClasses
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalMode
-XX:+UseCMSInitiatingOccupancyOnly
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-XX:+CMSScavengeBeforeRemark
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
-XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled
-XX:+TieredCompilation
-jar jcardinternal-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar "$@"

UPDATE: Just came across this tweet by @gclaramunt with a pointer to this very interesting presentation about GC.

References: - Java Performance - Java SE 6 HotSpot[tm] Virtual Machine Garbage Collection Tuning