Top 10 Java Performance Troubleshooting Tools

Here are 10 tools useful for Java application performance troubleshooting.

• jconsole comes together with JDK 1.5 and above. It is a Java Monitoring and Management Console - JMX-compliant graphical tool for monitoring a Java virtual machine. It can monitor both local and remote JVMs.

• VisualVM is a visual tool that integrates several existing JDK software tools and lightweight memory and CPU profiling capabilities. This tool is designed for both production and development time use and further enhances the capability of monitoring and performance analysis for the Java SE platform.

• HeapAnalyzer allows the finding of a possible Java™ heap leak area through its heuristic search engine and analysis of the JavaTM heap dump in Java applications. It analyzes Java heap dumps by parsing the Java heap dump, creating directional graphs, transforming them into directional trees, and executing the heuristic search engine.

• PerfAnal is a GUI-based tool for analyzing the performance of applications on the Java 2 Platform. You can use PerfAnal to identify performance problems in your code and locate code that needs tuning.

• JAMon is a free, simple, high performance, thread safe, Java API that allows developers to easily monitor production applications.

• Eclipse Memory Analyzer is a fast and feature-rich Java heap analyzer that helps you find memory leaks and reduce memory consumption.

• GCViewer is a free open source tool to visualize data produced by the Java VM options -verbose:gc and -Xloggc:<file>. It also calculates garbage collection related performance metrics (throughput, accumulated pauses, longest pause, etc.).

If you are running your application on HP-UX platform, check out:

• HPjmeter
  
  
  • Identify and diagnose performance problems in Java™ applications running on HP-UX
  
  
  • Monitor live Java™ applications and analyze profiling data
  
  
  • Capture profiling data with zero preparation when using JDK/JRE 5.0.04 or higher
  
  
  • Run the HPjmeter console on HP-UX, Linux, and Windows® systems
  
  
  • Improve garbage collection performance

• HPjconfig is a Java configuration tool for tuning your HP-UX 11i HP Integrity Itanium® and HP 9000 PA-RISC system kernel parameters to match the characteristics of your application. HPjconfig provides kernel parameter recommendations tailored to your HP-UX hardware platform. It offers save and restore functions for easy distribution of tailored recommendations across your customer base. When given specific Java and HP-UX versions, HPjconfig will determine if all of the latest HP-UX patches required for Java performance and functionality are installed on the system, and highlight any missing or superseded patches.

• Java Out-of-Box Tool is a stand-alone bundle that upon installation will install startup (RC) scripts, modify kernel parameters, rebuild the kernel, and reboot the system. During startup, the startup scripts will modify system tunables, thus providing better “Out of The Box” behavior for Java.