Enable automated heap dump generation
Overview
Use this task to enable automated heap dump generation. This function is not supported when using a Sun JVM which includes WebSphere Application Server running on HP-UX and Solaris operating systems. Automated heap dump generation support is available only on IBM SDK, and analyzes memory leak problems on AIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems.
Generate heap dumps can have a severe performance impact on WAS for several minutes.
Manually generating heap dumps at appropriate times might be difficult. To help analyze memory leak problems when memory leak detection occurs, some automated heap dump generation support is available. This functionality is available only for IBM SDK on AIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems.
Most memory leak analysis tools perform some forms of difference evaluation on two heap dumps. Upon detection of a suspicious memory situation, two heap dumps are automatically generated at appropriate times. The general idea is to take an initial heap dump as soon as problem detection occurs. Monitor the memory usage and take another heap dump when you determine that enough memory is leaked, so that we can compare the heap dumps to find the source of the leak.
To help analyze memory leak problems when memory leak detection occurs, some automated heap dump generation support is available.
Enable automated heap dump generation support
Servers | Application servers | server | Performance and Diagnostic Advisor Configuration | Runtime | Enable automatic heap dump collection check box | OK
The automated heap dump generation support is enabled.
To preserve disk space, the Performance and Diagnostic Advisor does not take heap dumps if more than 10 heap dumps already exist in the WAS home directory.
The automatic heap dump generation process dynamically reacts to various memory conditions and generates dumps only when it is needed. When the heap memory is too low, the heap dumps cannot be taken or the heap dump generation cannot be complete.
What to do next
We can monitor any notifications of memory leaks by checking the SystemOut.log file or Runtime Messages. See View the Performance and Diagnostic Advisor recommendations topic.If a memory leak is detected and we want to find the heap dump, refer to the Locating and analyzing heap dumps topic.
IBM recommends using the High Performance Extensible Logging (HPEL) log and trace infrastructure. We view HPEL log and trace information using the logViewer or the console.
Subtopics
Start the lightweight memory leak detection Use High Performance Extensible Logging to troubleshoot applications