| **JVM Parameters** | **Enable?** | **References / Details** | |:-------------------|:---|:---| |-XX:+UseG1GC | Enabled by default in Java 8u191+ | Most important defaults specific to G1 and their default values.
[https://dzone.com/articles/choosing-the-right-gc](https://dzone.com/articles/choosing-the-right-gc)
[https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/HotSpot/G1GC+Feedback](https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/HotSpot/G1GC+Feedback)
Alternative: Shenandoah GC | |-XX:+UseShenandoahGC | Alternative to G1GC. | Shenandoah Garbage Collector: experimental in Java 8, newer than G1GC, available in some OpenJDK 8 and newer releases.
[https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/shenandoah/Main](https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/shenandoah/Main)
[https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1) | |-XX:+UseZGC | Yes (JDK 11+) | Z GC : Better Garbage Collector Algorithm than G1 or Shenandoah. JDK 11+ required.
The Z Garbage Collector, also known as ZGC, is a scalable low latency garbage collector designed to meet the following goals:
· Pause times do not exceed 10ms (*)
· Pause times do not increase with the heap or live-set size
· Handle heaps ranging from a 8MB to 16TB in size
At a glance, ZGC is:
· Concurrent
· Region-based
· Compacting
· NUMA-aware
· Using colored pointers
· Using load barriers
At its core, ZGC is a concurrent garbage collector, meaning all heavy lifting work is done while Java threads continue to execute. This greatly limits the impact garbage collection will have on your application's response time.
7 JVM Arguments of Highly Effective Applications
[https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/zgc/Main](https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/zgc/Main) | |-XX:MaxRAMPercentage | Yes | Java 8u191+ required.
The old (and somewhat broken) flags -XX:{Min\|Max}RAMFraction are now deprecated.
There is a new flag -XX:MaxRAMPercentage, that takes a value between 0.0 and 100.0 and defaults to 25.0.
So if there is a 1 GB memory limit, the JVM heap is limited to ~250 MB by default.
While this can certainly be improved — depending on the RAM size and workload — it’s a pretty good default compared to the old behaviour.
[https://medium.com/adorsys/usecontainersupport-to-the-rescue-e77d6cfea712](https://medium.com/adorsys/usecontainersupport-to-the-rescue-e77d6cfea712) | |-XX:+UseContainerSupport | Enabled by default | Java 8u191+ required (enabled by default in Linux)
[https://medium.com/adorsys/jvm-memory-settings-in-a-container-environment-64b0840e1d9e](https://medium.com/adorsys/jvm-memory-settings-in-a-container-environment-64b0840e1d9e)
[https://medium.com/adorsys/usecontainersupport-to-the-rescue-e77d6cfea712](https://medium.com/adorsys/usecontainersupport-to-the-rescue-e77d6cfea712)
Please note that setting -Xmx and -Xms disables the automatic heap sizing.
# check if +UseContainerSupport is enabled
$ java -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version | grep UseContainerSupport
bool UseContainerSupport = true {product}
[https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/](https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/)
Java 10 introduced +UseContainerSupport (enabled by default) which makes the JVM use sane defaults in a container environment.
This feature is backported to Java 8 since 8u191, potentially allowing a huge percentage of Java deployments in the wild to properly configure their memory. | |-XshowSettings:vm | Yes | This is a priceless feature to display all the settings of the JVM, together with -XX:+PrintCommandLineFlags it can show a world of hidden stuff.
[http://www.javamonamour.org/2018/11/java-showsettings.html](http://www.javamonamour.org/2018/11/java-showsettings.html) | |-XX:MaxRAMFraction | No (deprecated) | Requires JDK 8u131+
-XX:MaxRAMFraction deprecated since Java 8u191+ (use -XX:MaxRAMPercentage instead)
[https://dzone.com/articles/running-a-jvm-in-a-container-without-getting-kille](https://dzone.com/articles/running-a-jvm-in-a-container-without-getting-kille)
[https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/03/14/java-inside-docker/](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/03/14/java-inside-docker/)
[https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/](https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/) | |-XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap | No (deprecated) | JDK 8u131+ required
Deprecated in Java10 & Java8u191+
[https://dzone.com/articles/running-a-jvm-in-a-container-without-getting-kille](https://dzone.com/articles/running-a-jvm-in-a-container-without-getting-kille)
[https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/03/14/java-inside-docker/](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/03/14/java-inside-docker/)
[https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/](https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/)
Java memory management and configuration is still complex. Although the JVM can read cgroup memory limits and adapt memory usage accordingly since Java 9/8u131,
it’s not a golden bullet. You need to know what -XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap does and you need to fine tune some parameters for every deployment.
Otherwise you risk wasting resources and money or getting your containers killed at the worst time possible. -XX:MaxRAMFraction=1 is especially dangerous.
Java 10+ brings a lot of improvements but still needs manual configuration. To be safe, load test your stuff. | |-XX:+UseStringDeduplication | Yes | [https://www.baeldung.com/jvm-garbage-collectors](https://www.baeldung.com/jvm-garbage-collectors) | |-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError
-XX:HeapDumpPath | Yes | When running a JVM in a docker container it is probably wise to use the HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError option so if you ever run out of memmory the jvm will write a dump of the heap to disk.
[https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/](https://merikan.com/2019/04/jvm-in-a-container/)
[https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1) | |-Xss | Test | Increase the thread’s stack size limit by passing the -Xss argument.
[https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1)
Each application will have tens, hundreds, thousands of threads. Each thread will have its own stack. Each one of them consumes memory.
If their consumption goes beyond a certain limit, then a StackOverflowError is thrown. More details about StackOverflowError and solutions to resolve it can be found in this article.
Linux 64-bit JVM Default thread stack size = 1024k
-Xss2m : This will set the thread's stack size to 2mb | |-Dsun.net.client.defaultConnectTimeout
-Dsun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout | Yes | [https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1) | |-Duser.timeZone | Yes | [https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1) | |Enable GC Logging | Check | JDK 8: -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -Xloggc:{file-path}
JDK9+: -Xlog:gc*:file={file-path}
[https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1](https://dzone.com/articles/7-jvm-arguments-of-highly-effective-applications-1) | | =======================================|==============|================================================================================