Performance tuning Java performance tools

Java Performance Tools

This page lists a number of tools for measuring the performance of Java applications. Some of them are focused tools for measuring within a single JVM, while others allow you to monitor the performance of an entire application infrastructure, including application and database servers. This chart shows how some of these tools fit into the development life cycle, along with other tools to aid development.

You can use these tools to characterize the performance of each computer in your system, and to identify performance bottlenecks.

Some of these tools and their uses are described in detail in this white paper on Profiling Java ™ applications on HP-UX

The tools are divided into the following categories:

» End-to-end Performance on Multiple Systems
» JVM-Focused
» System Performance and Tuning
» Automated Load Testing

HP Diagnostics software

HP Diagnostics software isolates applicationperformance problems and reduces the time to investigate and resolve performance bottlenecks. It provides actionable information to resolve application performance problems.
 
HP Diagnostics software traces J2EE, .NET, ERP, and CRM business processes from the client side across all tiers of the infrastructure.The modules then break down each transaction response time into time spent in the various tiers and within individual components.

• Drills down from slow, end-user transactions to the bottlenecked component, method, or SQL statement, helping to solve memory, exception, and other common
  problems
• Automatically detects all components touched by a business process and traces them with no user intervention
• Provides complete application visibility across the application lifecycle, enabling higher application quality when applications go live
• Reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR) in your J2EE, .NET, ERP, or CRM (SAP, Oracle®, PeopleSoft) environment

HP TransactionVision software

HP TransactionVision is a business transaction management product that gives you visibility into enterprise transactions to measure health, performance and business impact. It allows you to track transactions from end-to-end and all points in between.
 
HP TransactionVision software tracks and measures individual transactions as they progress through your enterprise. It provides the convergence between low-level systems and network monitoring and high-level business process monitoring to complete your business service management strategy and link your IT objectives with your business objectives.

• Provides non-intrusive architecture for quick implementation
• Enables auto-discovery of transaction flows to reduce time-consuming modeling
• Captures key performance metrics to help you understand performance and availability across the enterprise
• Directly measures the business impact of IT failures and successes
• Keeps data storage in check with smart filtering of tracking data
• Increases SOA manageability by tracking through to the back end
• Provides broad technology coverage across all tiers in the enterprise. It tracks transactions through J2EE application servers, messaging middleware such as WebSphere MQ and JMS implementations, integration technologies like brokers and process engines, and mainframe transaction monitors such as CICS and IMS. HP TransactionVision also supports web services invocations through HTTP or messaging middleware interfaces.

These tools collect and/or analyze data from a single JVM-instance.

HPjmeter

HPjmeter was created by HP to analyze performance data from any standard JVM, though the HP-UX implementation of Java provides more functionality than those from other vendors. The latest revision allows you attache remotely to a running JVM and start and stop measurement on the fly. You can analyze your application for cpu usage, lock contention, excessive exceptions and more. Also new with HPjmeter 3.0 is the ability to set alerts, monitor memory usage dynamically, and interrogate various JVM MBeans for information about the current state of the JVM.

HPjmeter has evolved from a tool focused on performance profiling to an all-encompassing JVM monitoring and management console. Features from HPjtune for analyzing Java heap usage have been migrated into HPjmeter.

One of the more useful features of HPjmeter is its ability to show you the Java method call stack, so troubleshooting unfamiliar programs is made easier.

The current download of HPjmeter (3.0, as of this writing) is packaged as a install package or a single jar file. If you have troubles unpacking and installing the package version, download the jar file and follow the instructions for running the HPjmeter console.

On HP-UX, you should always install from the software depot version because in addition to providing the HPjmeter console, it also installs the infrastructure necessary to allow a remote console to attach to an already running JVM.

HPjtune

HPjtune is a Java Garbage Collection (GC) visualization tool for analyzing garbage collection activity in a Java program. The analysis is carried out off-line or on-line, based on the output of the JVM via the -Xloggc or -Xverbosegc output file. The functionality of HPjtune has largely been migrated into the 3.0 version of HPjmeter, but the standalone version remains available.

HPjtune lets you view this data in the following ways:

• Several predefined graphs which show the utilization of garbage collector resources and the impact of the garbage collector on application performance.
  
  
• User-configurable graphs for access to selected garbage collection metrics.
  
  
• Separate predefined graphs for garbage collection behavior pertaining to threads.

HPjtune also includes a unique feature which allows you to use the data collected with the
-Xverbosegc option to predict the effect of new garbage collector parameters on future application runs.

Samurai Thread Stack Dump Viewer

If your program uses threads, and are having either performance or hang issues that you suspect are related to lock contention between threads, you may want to check out the tool Samurai.

If you are using SDK 1.3.1 or later, you can also use HPjmeter's lock contention metric to analyse lock contention between threads. This can help you find a contention issue that impacts performance but probably won't be of help in debugging a situation where the JVM hangs due to deadlock.

Quest JProbe

Quest's JProbe Suite is a complete solution Java profiler tool used by thousands of companies around the world. JProbe allows you to easily test your applications without any code changes and pinpoint Java or J2EE performance problems down to the line of code. In addition to the officially supported commercial version, Quest has made available a free version of JProbe for profiling Java applications on Windows and Linux.

ej-technologies JProfiler

JProfiler is an award-winning all-in-one Java profiler. JProfiler's intuitive GUI helps you find performance bottlenecks, pin down memory leaks and resolve threading issues. (Currently only supports HP-UX running on PA-RISC).

JVMPI and JVMTI

With the Java Virtual Machine Profiler Interface introduced in Java 1.4.2, anyone can write a Java profiling tool. A web search for "Java performance tools" will turn up a wealth of open source or freeware tools implemented using JVMPI.

Java 1.5 deprecates JVMPI in favor of the JVM Tool Interface. Java 1.5 also includes an MBean management interface that can be accessed with the included jconsole command. 

HP GlancePlus software

HP GlancePlus software is a system performance monitoring tool that provides numerous views into a system's performance. It tracks CPU, memory, disk, and network resources. You can view all the metrics in customizable graphical displays and set up alarms for application response measurement. You can drill into a single process for CPU, memory utilization, and even system call metrics. With GlancePlus you can easily examine system activities using rule-based metrics. This allows you to tailor system performance rules and characterize each computer in the system to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks.

You can see, try or buy HP GlancePlus software product from their website. The following tutorials tell you how to use Glance to analyze the performance of each computer in your system:

» GlancePlus product brief (.PDF, 1.4MB)
» Download the latest free version of GlancePlus
» Find out more information about HP's GlancePlus

HPjconfig

HPjconfig is a configuration tool for tuning your HP-UX 11.0 or HP-UX 11i system kernel parameters to match the characteristics of your application. HPjconfig recommends kernel parameters tailored to your Java enterprise services (web server, application server, etc.) and HP-UX hardware platform. HPjconfig version 2.1 displays data for Java releases 1.2.2.x, 1.3.x,  and 1.4.x. Version 3.0 displays data for Java releases 1.3.1.x, 1.4.x, and 5.0.x. (Java 1.2.2.x will not supported.)

» Download latest free version of HPjconfig
» Release notes for HPjconfig

Mercury LoadRunner

Mercury LoadRunner is one of the best known and most widely used automated testing tools. With LoadRunner web testing software, you can measure end-to-end performance, diagnose application and system bottlenecks, and tune for better performance - all from a single point of control. It supports a wide range of enterprise environments, including Web Services, J2EE, and .NET.

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is a 100% pure Java desktop application (open source) designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance. It was originally designed for testing web applications but has since expanded to other test functions.

Apache JMeter may be used to test performance both on static and dynamic resources (files, Servlets, Perl scripts, Java Objects, databases and queries, FTP servers and more). It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server, network or object to test its strength or to analyze overall performance under different load types. You can use it to make a graphical analysis of performance or to test your server/script/object behavior under heavy concurrent load.

» Download a free Apache JMeter
» Installing Apache JMeter
» Running Apache JMeter
» User guide for Apache JMeter

Empirix e-Test suite

The e-TEST suite from Empirix is one of the easiest and most accurate tools to test the scalability and functionality of your Enterprise Java Beans Middle-tier application. This automated testing tool can access the scalability of EJB applications in the early development process, which will cost less than it would after system integration.

For more information, refer to the Empirix website.

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