For my application, the memory used by the Java process is much more than the heap size.
The system where the containers are running starts to have memory problem because the container is taking much more memory than the heap size.
The heap size is set to 128 MB (-Xmx128m -Xms128m) while the container takes up to 1GB of memory. Under normal condition, it needs 500MB. If the docker container has a limit below (e.g. mem_limit=mem_limit=400MB) the process gets killed by the out of memory killer of the OS.
Could you explain why the Java process is using much more memory than the heap? How to size correctly the Docker memory limit? Is there a way to reduce the off-heap memory footprint of the Java process?
I gather some details about the issue using command from Native memory tracking in JVM.
From the host system, I get the memory used by the container.
$ docker stats --no-stream 9afcb62a26c8
CONTAINER ID NAME CPU % MEM USAGE / LIMIT MEM % NET I/O BLOCK I/O PIDS
9afcb62a26c8 xx-xxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.0acbb46bb6fe3ae1b1c99aff3a6073bb7b7ecf85 0.93% 461MiB / 9.744GiB 4.62% 286MB / 7.92MB 157MB / 2.66GB 57
From inside the container, I get the memory used by the process.
$ ps -p 71 -o pcpu,rss,size,vsize
%CPU RSS SIZE VSZ
11.2 486040 580860 3814600
$ jcmd 71 VM.native_memory
71:
Native Memory Tracking:
Total: reserved=1631932KB, committed=367400KB
- Java Heap (reserved=131072KB, committed=131072KB)
(mmap: reserved=131072KB, committed=131072KB)
- Class (reserved=1120142KB, committed=79830KB)
(classes #15267)
( instance classes #14230, array classes #1037)
(malloc=1934KB #32977)
(mmap: reserved=1118208KB, committed=77896KB)
( Metadata: )
( reserved=69632KB, committed=68272KB)
( used=66725KB)
( free=1547KB)
( waste=0KB =0.00%)
( Class space:)
( reserved=1048576KB, committed=9624KB)
( used=8939KB)
( free=685KB)
( waste=0KB =0.00%)
- Thread (reserved=24786KB, committed=5294KB)
(thread #56)
(stack: reserved=24500KB, committed=5008KB)
(malloc=198KB #293)
(arena=88KB #110)
- Code (reserved=250635KB, committed=45907KB)
(malloc=2947KB #13459)
(mmap: reserved=247688KB, committed=42960KB)
- GC (reserved=48091KB, committed=48091KB)
(malloc=10439KB #18634)
(mmap: reserved=37652KB, committed=37652KB)
- Compiler (reserved=358KB, committed=358KB)
(malloc=249KB #1450)
(arena=109KB #5)
- Internal (reserved=1165KB, committed=1165KB)
(malloc=1125KB #3363)
(mmap: reserved=40KB, committed=40KB)
- Other (reserved=16696KB, committed=16696KB)
(malloc=16696KB #35)
- Symbol (reserved=15277KB, committed=15277KB)
(malloc=13543KB #180850)
(arena=1734KB #1)
- Native Memory Tracking (reserved=4436KB, committed=4436KB)
(malloc=378KB #5359)
(tracking overhead=4058KB)
- Shared class space (reserved=17144KB, committed=17144KB)
(mmap: reserved=17144KB, committed=17144KB)
- Arena Chunk (reserved=1850KB, committed=1850KB)
(malloc=1850KB)
- Logging (reserved=4KB, committed=4KB)
(malloc=4KB #179)
- Arguments (reserved=19KB, committed=19KB)
(malloc=19KB #512)
- Module (reserved=258KB, committed=258KB)
(malloc=258KB #2356)
$ cat /proc/71/smaps | grep Rss | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d " " | cut -f1 -dk | sort -n | awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }'
491080
The application is a web server using Jetty/Jersey/CDI bundled inside a fat far of 36 MB.
The following version of OS and Java are used (inside the container). The Docker image is based on openjdk:11-jre-slim.
$ java -version
openjdk version "11" 2018-09-25
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11+28-Debian-1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 11+28-Debian-1, mixed mode, sharing)
$ uname -a
Linux service1 4.9.125-linuxkit #1 SMP Fri Sep 7 08:20:28 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux
https://gist.github.com/prasanthj/48e7063cac88eb396bc9961fb3149b58