Young generation configuration

Fri Sep 11 13:49:45 PDT 2009

Thanks for your response Paul.

I'll take another look at the parallel collector.  

That's a good point about the -XX:+UseCompressedOops.  We started off
with heaps bigger than 32G so I had left that option out.  I'll put it
back in and definitely try out 6u18 when it's available.

What about the option -XX:+UseAdaptiveGCBoundary?  I don't see it
referenced very often.  Would it be helpful in a case like mine?

I'm not sure I understand your last paragraph.  What is the period of
time that you would be interested in seeing?

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul.Hohensee at Sun.COM [mailto:Paul.Hohensee at Sun.COM] 
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 1:23 PM
To: Tony Printezis
Cc: Jeff Lloyd; hotspot-gc-use at openjdk.java.net
Subject: Re: Young generation configuration

Another alternative mentioned in Tony and Charlie's J1 slides is the 
parallel
collector.  If, as Tony says, you can make the young gen large enough to

avoid
promotion, and you really do have a steady state old gen, then which old
gen
collector you use wouldn't matter much to pause times, given that young
gen pause times seem to be your immediate problem.

It may be that you just need more hardware threads to collect such a big

young
gen too.  You might vary the number of gc threads to see how that
affects
collection times.  If there's significant differences, then you need
more
hardware threads, i.e., a bigger machine.

You might also try using compressed pointers via -XX:+UseCompressedOops.
That should cut down the total survivor size significantly, perhaps
enough
to that your current hardware threads can collect significantly faster.

Heap size
will be limited to < 32gb, but you're app will probably fit.  A more 
efficient
version of compressed pointers will be available in 6u18, btw.

I notice that none of your logs shows more than age 7 stats even though
the
tenuring threshold is 15.  It'd be nice to see if anything dies before
then.

Paul

Tony Printezis wrote:
> Jeff,
>
> Hi. I had a very brief look at your logs. Yes, your app does seem to 
> need to copy quite a lot (I don't think I've ever seen 1-2GB of data 
> being copied in age 1!!!). From what I've seen from the space sizes, 
> you're doing the right thing (i.e., you're consistent with what we 
> talked about during the talk): you have quite large young gen and a 
> reasonably sized old gen. But the sheer amount of surviving objects is

> what's getting you. How much larger can you make your young gen? I
think 
> in this case, the larger, the better.  Maybe, you can also try 
> MaxTenuringThreshold=1. This goes against our general advice, but this

> might decrease the amount of objects being copied during young GCs, at

> the expense of more frequent CMS cycles...
>
> Tony
>
> jeff.lloyd at algorithmics.com wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>>  
>>
>> I'm new to this list and I have a few questions about tuning my young

>> generation gc.
>>
>>  
>>
>> I have chosen to use the CMS garbage collector because my application

>> is a relatively large reporting server that has a web front end and 
>> therefore needs to have minimal pauses. 
>>
>>  
>>
>> I am using java 1.6.0_16 64-bit on redhat 5.2 intel 8x3GHz and 64GB
ram.
>>
>>  
>>
>> The machine is dedicated to this JVM.
>>
>>  
>>
>> My steady-state was calculated as follows:
>>
>> -          A typical number of users logged in and viewed several
reports
>>
>> -          Stopped user actions and performed a manual full GC
>>
>> -          Look at the amount of heap used and take that number as
the 
>> steady-state memory requirement
>>
>>  
>>
>> In this case my heap usage was ~10GB.  In order to handle variance or

>> spikes I sized my old generation at 15-20GB.
>>
>>  
>>
>> I sized my young generation at 32-42GB and used survivor ratios of 1,

>> 2, 3 and 6.
>>
>>  
>>
>> My goal is to maximize throughput and minimize pauses.  I'm willing
to 
>> sacrifice ram to increase speed.
>>
>>  
>>
>> I have attached several of my many gc logs.  The file gc_48G.txt is 
>> just using CMS without any other tuning, and the results are much 
>> worse than what I have been able to accomplish with other settings.  
>> The best results are in the files gc_52G_20Gold_32Gyoung_2sr.txt and 
>> gc_57G_15Gold_42Gyoung_1sr.txt.
>>
>>  
>>
>> The problem is that some of the pauses are just too long.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Is there a way to reduce the pause time any more than I have it now?
>>
>> Am I heading in the right direction?  I ask because the default 
>> settings are so different than what I have been heading towards.
>>
>>  
>>
>> The best reference I have found on what good gc logs look like come 
>> from brief examples presented at JavaOne this year by Tony Printezis 
>> and Charlie Hunt.  But I don't seem to be able to get logs that 
>> resemble their tenuring patterns.
>>
>>  
>>
>> I think I have a lot of medium-lived objects instead of nice 
>> short-lived ones.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Are there any good practices for apps with objects like this?
>>
>>  
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>  
>>
>>  
>>
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