low end virtual private server for java development - java

Will a vps with 360 megs of ram running Linux be able to support a single user developing a java web application that uses Spring, Hibernate, and MySQL for the database? The server will be for development only so the application will not have more then one or two concurrent users.
edit:
By development I mean a server I can deploy and test on. The actual coding will be done on windows, but I want a Linux server to test on as well.

This could work ok, but it depends a lot on your application setup. If you cache a lot, your appserver caching page content, Hibernate caching query results/objects or MySQL caching query results you probably will need more RAM. So if your content is big it might not fit, otherwise it might just fit. If you have absulutely no option of increasing the amount of memory if you find out you need more I would certainly not recommend this setup.
But maybe more to the point: What is your target platform? I would say that your server should match that.
Just for linux testing it probably is easier to either get a cheap pc or run it inside a virtual machine on your development machine (assuming you've got plenty of ram on that one).

Depends on what you're running for your IDE. If you're using Eclipse, you're going to want somewhere around 1Gb of RAM (Eclipse is a memory hog...and slow as all hell if you don't have enough).
If you're using a more efficient (memory wise) IDE, then you should be good to go with that setup for development.
UPDATE
Since no coding is going to happen on the box...you should be just fine with that box to do your testing. Enjoy!

Short answer - I don't think you will have any problems with the amount of ram. I've deployed a rails app to a 256MB VPS and it worked great for development.

Related

How to test if my java application can successfully handle low memory/CPU resources on Tomcat server?

I want to test how my java application would behave on Tomcat server with 512M RAM only. In other words I need to do memory load-testing to check if my application can run in such restricted environment.
Using which tools and how can I achieve this?
I heard about APM software including Stackify Prefix, New Relic APM, JMeter, JVisualVM, JVM Monitor, JBenchX - but I am not sure I need to proceed with any of them for my specific purpose.
The same problem for having very limited CPU resources. I'd like to test my app on my desktop PC before deploying to Jelastic cloud with limited memory/CPU.
You can artificially limit the JVM heap allocated to tomcat by modifying -Xmx command-line argument which defines the maximum heap space your Tomcat server will use.
If low heap size is the only thing you would like to test - it would be sufficient.
You might also amending CPU affinity to bind your Tomcat server to a single CPU core (or limited number of cores)
If you want to go further you can create a virtual machine using i.e. VirtualBox and replicate all the anticipated hardware/software which you'll have after the deployment.
With regards to testing I would recommend the following performance testing techniques:
Load Testing - putting your system under anticipated load to see if it is capable of handling it
Soak Testing - basically the same as Load Testing but for prolonged duration (i.e. overnight or weekend) - it will allow you to identify memory leaks
Stress Testing - start with Load Testing and gradually increase the load until response time starts exceeding acceptable threshold or errors start occurring (whatever comes the first) - it will let you know the limits of your application/configuration and vision what and how is gonna break
Using profiler tools like YourKit or JProfiler for fine-tuning your code would be beneficial as well.
The best way to do this is with a Virtual Machine. You can pick your technology of choice, but an easy option would be to use Oracle VirtualBox, which is freely-available for many platforms. Just install a minimal OS inside the VM, then add Java, your application, etc. and then run your load-test against it.
Networking works as usual, so you can use your existing load-testing framework and just point it at the IP address of the VM.
There are other fancier way to do it, e.g. using Docker or whatever, but this will get the job done for a smoke-test.
I wouldn't recommend trying to use a server with a large amount of RAM and then try to "synthesize" a low-RAM situation without using something like a Virtual Machine (and BTW Docker uses VMs internally).

Java application Performance issue

Issue at hand:
I have a java application which is taking twice as long to run on DEV and QA Servers than on my local machine. When running the job on Dev and QA I’m getting times around 1:45 – 2:30 (hh:MM) compared to my local which is getting about 0:45 – 1:10. I’m trying to determine what could be causing slow performance of a java application on servers.
What I have looked into so far none providing an answer:
Testing with same maxheap size
Observing stress on cpu. Dev is idle about 75% of the time when running the batch application, so I don’t think this is an issue.
Observing ram on Dev. Dev has more than enough memory to provide the JVM the specified maxHeap (128mb). If I understand correctly the available memory of the machine doesn’t matter as long as the MaxHeap size can be provided by the machine correct?
Ensuring the version of java isn’t causing the issue.
Set logging level same: “INFO”
Processor: servers has 2.67GHz processor my local only has 2.19GHz
Additional Information.
Server OS: Linux
Local Computer OS: Windows
Single threaded Java application.
Application is reading and writing to text files and also has calls
to a database(hibernate c3p0). These are my most/only expensive operations
I’ve scoured dozens of sites to determine a root cause but I haven’t been able to nail down what is causing the issue any help will be much appreciated.
Application is reading and writing to text files and also has calls to a database(hibernate c3p0). These are my most/only expensive operations
Most likely your server has slower access to the database it is using. e.g. if you were to run the database on the same machine it can be a lot faster than across a network. I would look at the time it takes to perform some simple hibernate operations locally and on your server. If performance is a concern I suggest looking at removing hibernate or even your database and your program can run 10x - 100x faster.
I’m trying to determine what could be causing slow performance of a java application on servers
The Server I was testing on happened to be in the DMZ (outside the network). While the database and my local computer (when working in the office) are inside the network. This was the case I failed to evaluate.

Extreme slowdown Cloud vs VPS (Amazon, Jelastic)

We are trying to move one of our web-services (Java) to the cloud from a development server, here are the details:
There is a PHP front-end, connecting to a Java-based web-service that is connected to a MySQL database (all requests to the database are sent from the web-service, the php part is communicating with the Java back-end only, no direct connection to the database).
Start Point
Dev Server - CentOS (cPanel), 765MB-1.5GB RAM, 4CPU, Tomcat 7
*the software is running fast, no speed issues, logs show normal CPU and memory usage
Scenario #1
PHP front-end on Elastic Beanstalk and Java web-service with database on Elastic Beanstalk
*the software is about 80% slower, logs show normal CPU and memory usage
Scenario #2
PHP front-end on VPS (same company/location with Jelastic) and Java web-service with database on Jelastic
*the software is about 70% slower, logs show normal CPU and memory usage
Scenario #3
PHP front-end on VPS, Java web-service with database on Elastic Beanstalk and Jelastic (swithing)
*the software is about 70-80% slower, logs show normal CPU and memory usage on both cloud environments
What I figured out, no matter where the PHP front-end is located, that will load fast, nothing to search here.
As soon as the Java back-end is moved from the VPS to the cloud (doesn't matter if Amazon or Jelastic), the whole software slows down extremely. Based on the logs and since we tried with two providers, this doesn't seem like a resource issue.
It cannot be a connection issue since we tried to have the PHP and Java in the same environment (Scenario #1).
It is either the Java web-service slowing down extremely (for unknown reason as logs show low resource usage) or it could be the connection between the Java application and the database (I doubt since in the first scenario, all three components are on Amazon, same environment, location).
Anyone ever had such an issue before? Any ideas? Thank you!
(note, I have zero experience with cloud hosting)
It might be related to specific parameters in configuration files, mostly for DB. Please double check that they are the same in each test.
Also it is not clear how you measure performance and what "slower" exactly means. And you have not specified size of resources on Jelastic and EB. Please double check that resources are equal as well.
For high performance Java cloud backend, you can try Jelastic implementation by Elastx - see the performance research that CloudSpectator did on them (they also used Amazon and Rackspace cloud in the study): http://blog.jelastic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Elastx-Fueld-by-SolidFire-9-5-13+Jelastic.pdf
Also, I do not know who your current Jelastic provider is, but if you contact them by clicking Help / Contact Support in Jelastic dashboard, I am sure that they will be happy to troubleshoot the issue! If this does not help - please ping me offline.
What you are measuring is CPU an memory. Since both give normal results, and your application is communicating over the network, I'd suspect network latency to be the culprit. Next thing to look into would be for example disk I/O performance, which can slow down your application like having a handbrake.

Hibernate+JPA+Spring Memory Leak

I am deveoloping a web application with Hibernate, JPA, Spring and Struts2. When I run the application for a few hours in my web server (VPS Tomcat) the OS send a SIGKILL to tomcat because of the memory usage. My server has 288Mb, tomcat gets killed when it reaches 200Mb aprox. Someone has told me that I need more memory but my application is small and doesn´t have too much traffic, it is not in production yet. I am using postgresql and my database is about 150Mb, it has many images. I have tried to use a memory profiler with netbeans, but the IDE becomes to slow and I have not been able to find anything.
I'll appreciate any help.
Do you close properly your connections in a finally block ?
It's hard to reply without the code with only theses informations
i have used JProfiler and yourkit but i am not satisfied with output for actual performance tuning and memory usage currently we have been switched to java melody. This not only help performance optimization in dev but also in production system. Java melody is very easy to integrate and configure and in production you can enable or disable by just updating web.xml

Java Webapp Performance Issues

I have a Web Application, Made entirely with Java. The Webapp doesn't use any Graphical / Model Framework, instead, the webapp uses The Model-View Controller. It's made only with Servlet specification (Servlet ver. 2.4).
The webapp it's developed since 2001, and it's very complex. Initially, was built for work with Tomcat 4.x/5.x. Actually, runs on Tomcat 6.x. But, we still having memory Leaks.
In Depth, the specifications of The Webapp can resumed as:
Uses Servlet v. 2.4 Specification.
It doesn't use Any Framework
It doesn't use JavaEE (Not EJB)
It's based on JavaSE (With Servlets)
Works Only on IE 6+ (Because of it's age)
Infrastructure Specification
Actually, the webapp works in three environments:
First
IBM Server (I don't remember exactly the model)
Intel Xeon 2.4 Ghz
32GB RAM
1TB HDD
Tomcat (Version 6) is configured to use 8GB of RAM
Second
Dell Server
Intel Xeon 2.0Ghz
4GB RAM
500GB HDD
Tomcat (Version 5.5) is configured to use 1.5GB of RAM
Third
Dell Server
Amd Opteron 1214 2.20Ghz
4GB RAM
320GB HDD
Tomcat (Version 6) is Configured to use 1.5GB of RAM
Database specification
The webapp uses SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition as a DBMS, except for the user of the first server-specification, that uses SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition. For the connection pools, the app uses Apache DBCP.
Problem
Well, it has very serious performance issues. The webapp slow down continually, and, many times Denies the Service. The only way to recover the app is restarting The Apache Tomcat Service.
During a performance Audit, i've found several programming issues (Like database connections that never closes, excesive use of Vector collection [instead of ArrayList]).
I want to know how can improve the performance for the app, which applications can help me to monitoring the Tomcat performance and the Webapp Memory usage.
All suggestions are gladly accepted.
You could also try stagemonitor. It is an open source performance monitoring library. It records request response times, JVM metrics, request details including a call stack (profile) of the called methods during the request and more. Because of the low overhead, you can also use it in production.
The tuning procedure would be the following.
Identify slow requests with the Request Dashboard
Analyze the stack trace of the request with the Request Detail Dashboard to find out about slow methods
Dive into your code and try to optimize those slow methods
You can also correlate some metrics like the throughput or number of sessions with the response time or cpu usage
Analyze the heap with the JVM Memory Dashboard
Note: I am the developer of stagemonitor.
I would start with some tools that can help you profiling the application. Since you are developing webapp start with Lambda Probe and Java melody.
The first step is to determine the conditions under which the app starts to behave oddly. Ask yourself few questions:
Do performance issues arise right after applications starts, or overtime?
Do performance issues are correlated to quantity of client requests?
What is the real performance problem - high load on the server or lack of memory (note that they are related, so check which one starts first)
Are there any background processes which are performing some massive operations? Are they scheduled to run at some particular time period?
Try to find some clues before going deep into code. It will help you to narrow down possible causes.
As Joshua Bloch has stated in his book entitled "Effective Java" - performance issues are rarely the effect of some minor mistakes in source code (although, of course, misuse of Java constructs can lead to disaster). Usually the cause is bad system (API) architecture.
The last suggestion based on my experience - try not to think that high memory consumption is something bad. Tomcat will use as much memory as operating system and JVM will let him (not more than max settings) and just when it needs more - Tomcat will perform garbage collection. So a typical (proper!) graph of memory consumption looks like a saw. If you are dealing with memory leak, then the graph will be increasing constantly, but indefinitely. This is the most often misunderstood of memory leaks, so keep it in mind.
To be honest - we cannot help you much further. Those are just pointers, now you will have to make extensive research to figure out the cause :)
The general solution is to use a profiler e.g. YourKit, with a realistic workload which reproduces the problem.
What I do first is a CPU only profile, a memory only profile and finally a CPU & Memory profile on at once (I then look at the CPU profile results)
YourKit can also monitor your high level operations such a Java EE resources and JDBC connections. I haven't tried these as I don't use them. ;)
It can be a good idea to improve the efficiency even if its not the cause of the problem as it will reduce the amount of "noise" in these profiles and make your issues more obvious.
You could try increasing the amount of memory available but a suspect it will just delay the problem.
Ok. So I have seen huge Java applications run lesser configurations. You should try to do the following -
First connect a Profiler to your application and see which part of your application takes the most time. You can use JProfiler or Eclipse MAT ( I personally prefer JProfiler). Also try to take a look at the objects taking the most memory. This will help you narrow down to the parts which you need to rewrite to improve the performance.
Once you have taken a look at the memory leaks update your application to use 64bit JDK(assuming it already does not do so)
Take a look at your JVM arguments and optimize them.
You can try the open source tool Webapp Watcher in order to identify where in the code is the performance issue.
You have first to add a filter in the webapp (as explained here) in order to record metrics, and then import the logs in the WAW Analyzer tool and follow the steps described in the doc to know where is the potential performance issue in the code.

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