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IBM provides tooling and documentation to assist in the understanding, monitoring, and problem diagnosis of applications and deployments running IBM Runtime Environments for Java.
The IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer (GCMV) is a tool which allows you to visualize and analyse the memory usage and garbage collection activity of your Java application.
GCMV Overview
IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer (GCMV) provides analysis and views of your applications verbose gc output. GCMV displays the data in both graphical and tabulated form. It provides a clear summary and interprets the information to produce a series of tuning recommendations.
Use GCMV to help you:
- Monitor and fine tune Java heap size and garbage collection performance
- Check for memory leaks
- Size the Java heap correctly
- Select the best garbage collection policy
- Analyze output from optthruput, optavgpause, gencon and balanced garbage collection modes
Features and benefits
GCMV uses a powerful statistical analysis engine which provides guidance on improvements in these areas:
- Memory Leak Detection
- Detect Java heap exhaustion and memory leaks
- Detect "native" (malloc) heap exhaustion and memory leaks
- Optimizing garbage collection performance
- Determine garbage collection overhead
- Detect long or frequent garbage collection cycles and causes
- Recommend settings to avoid long or frequent garbage collection cycles
- Recommend optimum garbage policy
- Fine tuning of Java heap size
- Determine peak and average memory usage
- Recommend Java heap settings
GCMV provides a flexible user interface, making it possible to carry out further analysis of the data and to "drill down" into the causes of trends or data points of interest. The GCMV graphical interface provides the following capabilities:
- Raw log, tabulated data and graph views
- Ability to zoom and crop graphs
- Ability to select data points in line plots and view in raw data
- Customize the graph by adding/removing data and changing display units
- Compare output from multiple logs
- Save data to jpeg or .csv files for export to spreadsheets
- Templates allow configuration to be saved
- Support for compressed files and rolling logs
For example Figure 1 shows GCMV running in the IBM Support Assistant Workbench.
System requirements
GCMV is installed within the IBM Support Assistant Workbench.
GCMV supports the following file types:
-verbose:gclogs from the following:- IBM Java 1.4.2, 5.0, 6, 7 and 6.0.1 for z/OS
- Sun Java 1.4.2, 5.0, 6 and Java 7
- HP Java 1.4.2, 5.0, 6 and Java 7
- WebSphere Real Time V1,V2 and V3
- native memory logs from:
- Linux®
- AIX®
- Windows®
Details on how to generate the native memory logs for these platforms are provided in the GCMV help file.
Installation
GCMV is installed within the IBM Support Assistant Workbench. To install GCMV follow the steps in the technote How to Install and Run Tools through the IBM Support Assistant. Whilst following the instructions in the technote please note that in the Tools Add-ons popup GCMV is listed under the 'JVM-based Tools' folder as 'IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer'
Contact information
For comments specific to this download please send mail directly to us.
