JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning

Table of Contents

JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Performance Tuning Concepts

Preface

What you will get from this book?

What is performance?

Scalability: the other side of performance

The tuning process

Tuning in the software development cycle

Building the performance test

Establish a baseline

Collect data

How long should data collection last?

Analyze data

Configure and test again

Tuning Java Enterprise applications

Areas of tuning

Summary

2. Installing the Tools for Tuning

Welcome to scientific tuning

The rationale behind the choice of the tools

Profiling the Java Virtual Machine

Installing the JVM

Installing VisualVM

Connecting to a local server

Connecting to a remote server

Monitoring your server

The Monitor tab

The Threads tab

The Profiler tab

Collecting snapshots

Extending VisualVM

Profiling your applications with Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project

Installing the TPTP suite

Updating Eclipse

How to profile an application

Going beyond the basics of TPTP

Load testing your application with JMeter

Building a Test Plan

Step 1: Create a Thread Group

Step 2: Create a Sampler

Step 3: Create a Listener

Making your test plan a bit more realistic

How to create a complex Test Plan

Running JMeter as a shell

Operating system tools and commands

Windows users

Unix users

Dealing with low CPU utilization

Dealing with high CPU utilization

Dealing with high resource contention

Dealing with high disk utilization

Summary

3. Tuning the Java Virtual Machine

The starting point

Choosing the JVM settings

Setting the correct heap size

The correct amount of memory to grant your application

Step # 1: Finding the maximum heap (-Xmx)

Step # 2: Finding the initial heap size (-Xms)

I cannot allocate enough memory for the JVM!

Where do I configure JVM settings in JBoss AS?

Sizing the garbage collector generations

Which is the correct ratio between the young and old generations?

The garbage collector algorithms

Choosing the right garbage collector for your application

The G1 garbage collector

Debugging garbage collection

Making good use of the memory

Avoid creating large Java objects

Handling 'Out of Memory' errors

Finding the memory leak in your code

A practical example

Application description

Setting up a test bed

Benchmark aftermath

Consideration #1

Consideration #2

Action

Further optimization

Summary

4. Tuning the JBoss AS

From release 4.x to 5.x, and on

Comparing server releases

Creating a custom application server configuration

JBoss AS pools

The System thread pool

Finding out if the System thread pool is a bottleneck

JDBC connection pool

Calculating the optimal min-pool-size and max-pool-size

Using Prepared Statements efficiently

Two things to be aware of:

Detecting connection leaks

Should you reuse connections or acquire new ones from the pool?

Logging for performance

Choosing the best logging strategy

Which is the fastest appender?

Should I use the AsyncAppender to improve my log throughput?

Which layout should I choose for my logs?

Is it enough to increase the log threshold to get rid of log charge?

How does logging hierarchy influence performance?

Summary

5. Tuning the Middleware Services

Introduction to Enterprise Java Beans

Session Beans

How to configure the optimal size for stateless pool?

How to configure the optimal size of stateful cache?

Comparing SLSBs and SFSBs performance

When things get wilder

Is it possible that Stateful Beans are faster then Stateless Beans?

Session Beans and Transactions

Customizing JBoss EJB container policies

Customizing the single deployment unit

Introduction to the Java Messaging system

Entering the JBoss Messaging system

Tuning JBoss JMS provider

Tuning JBoss Messaging (JBoss AS 5.x)

How do you tune the JBoss Messaging Connection factory?

How do you tune JBoss Messaging destinations?

Tuning HornetQ (JBoss AS 6.x)

How to configure HornetQ journal for optimal performance?

How do you configure HornetQ transport for optimal performance?

Basic JMS tuning

An example use case with HornetQ

Summary

6. Tuning the Persistence Layer

Designing a good database

Reducing the space needed by your database

Partitioning the database

Using indexes

Tuning JDBC

Using a Connection Pool

Setting the proper fetch size

Use batch updates for bulk insert/updates

Use Prepared Statements instead of Statements

Tuning JDBC networking

Tuning Hibernate and JPA

Optimizing object retrieval

Limiting the amount of data fetched with pages

Fetching parent and child items with a single query

Combining join fetches and paging

Speeding up your Hibernate queries with batches

Using named queries to speed up your queries

Improving the performance of bulk SQL statements

Evaluating using caches to speed up your queries

Hibernate caches

The first-level cache

The second-level cache

Configuring the second-level cache on JBoss AS

The query cache

Entity cache versus query cache

Optimizing data synchronization

A sample use case

Summary

7. JBoss AS Cluster Tuning

Introduction to JBoss clustering

Configuring JGroups transport

How to optimize the UDP transport configuration

How to optimize the JGroups' Protocol stack

Tuning JBoss Cache

Understanding JBoss Cache configuration

Configuring cacheMode

Configuring cache concurrency

Configuring the isolationLevel

Tuning session replication

Override SFSB's isModified method

Use buddy replication

Advanced buddy replication

Buddy replication and session affinity

Configure replication granularity and replication trigger

How to configure the replication-trigger

How to configure the replication-granularity

Tuning cache storage

Where does cache data get stored?

Summary

8. Tomcat Web Server Tuning

JBoss Web server basics

Configuring Connectors for optimal performance

How do you calculate the threads for your application?

A concrete example

The long life of Web threads

Is there a maximum amount of connections the Web server can handle?

Using Apache Portable Runtime

Integrating JBoss Web server with Apache Web server

Load testing Apache-JBoss connectivity

mod_cluster to the rescue?

Last tips before rolling JBoss Web server in production

Summary

9. Tuning Web Applications on JBoss AS

Choosing a framework for your web applications

Comparing framework performance

The performance of tabular data

The performance of rich tree

Increasing the performance of JSF and RichFaces

Configuring JSF state saving efficiently

Using Ajax to speed up your JSF applications

Speeding up CSS and JavaScript file loading

Tuning web services

Performance of web services

Elements influencing the performance of web services

Reducing the size of SOAP messages

Faster JBossWS provider

The wisdom behind these benchmarks

Summary

A. A Tuned Mind

Index

JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning

JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning

Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing

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First published: December 2010

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Credits

Author

Francesco Marchioni

Reviewers

Devon Hillard

Kushal Paudyal

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About the Author

Francesco Marchioni is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect employed by an Italian company based in Rome. He started learning Java in 1997 and since then he has followed the path to the newest Application Program Interfaces released by Sun. Since 2000, he has joined the JBoss Community when the application server was running release 2.X.

He has spent many years as a software consultant, where he has created many successful software migrations from vendor platforms to the open source products like JBoss AS, fulfilling the tight budget requirements of current times.

In the past five years he has started authoring technical articles for O'Reilly Media and running an IT portal focused on JBoss products (http://www.mastertheboss.com).

In December 2009, he published the title, JBoss AS 5 Development, which describes how to create and deploy Java Enterprise applications on JBoss AS—http://www.packtpub.com/jboss-as-5-development/book.

I'd like to thank Packt Publishing for offering another opportunity to write about my favorite application server. I'd also like to thank my family for supporting me during the creation of this book, in particular my father for teaching me all the tricks of the glorious C-64 when I was a kid.

Also a special thanks to the people that collaborated to this book: my friend Luca Viola who lent me the hardware for these benchmarks. JBoss guys Carlo de Wolf and Alessio Soldano for their precious advices. And last but not least the technical reviewers - Devon Hillard and Kushal Paudyal—and all the Packt Pub staff for their competent cooperation.

About the Reviewers

Devon Hillard is a J2EE Architect with over 12 years of experience working on some of the largest e-commerce sites in the world including AT&T, Target, JCrew, and many more. Working with large-scale enterprise environments has led to a natural focus on performance and security.

Devon created http://10MinuteMail.com, a popular temporary e-mail service, which is one of the top 10,000 sites in the world (based on http://www.alexa.com/ ranking). Devon is also a founding partner at Spark::red, a premier hosting company for Fortune 500 clients using ATG e-commerce software, and often consults in the e-commerce, performance, and security arenas. He has also reviewed several technical book manuscripts on topics such as JBoss, GWT, and JBoss Seam.

Kushal Paudyal has been a professional Software Engineer for over five years on the Java/J2EE platform. He currently works as a Technical Lead for one of the biggest companies in USA that provides warranty management software. Apart from design, development, testing, and global delivery of the software, Kushal has extensive experience of leading a team of support analysts in supporting the enterprise applications deployed to top notch automotive industries in USA and optimizing the performance of production applications deployed to JBoss and WebSphere application servers.

Kushal's domain of expertise is warranty, fleet, and service lifecycle management. He holds a masters degree in Computer Science and a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering.

Apart from work, Kushal is a hobbyist photographer. He can be reached at <kushalzone@gmail.com>.

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Preface

JBoss AS 5 Performance Tuning will teach you how to deliver fast applications on the JBoss Application Server and Apache Tomcat, giving you a decisive competitive advantage over your competitors. You will learn how to optimize hardware resources, meeting your application requirements with less expenditure.

The performance of Java Enterprise applications is the sum of a set of components including the Java Virtual Machine configuration, the application server configuration (in our case, JBoss AS), the application code itself, and ultimately the operating system. This book will show you how to apply the correct tuning methodology and use the tuning tools that will help you to monitor and address any performance issues.

By looking more closely at the Java Virtual Machine, you will get a deeper understanding of what the available options are for your applications, and how their performance will be affected. Learn about thread pool tuning, EJB tuning, and JMS tuning, which are crucial parts of enterprise applications.

The persistence layer and the JBoss Clustering service are two of the most crucial elements which need to be configured correctly in order to run a fast application. These aspects are covered in detail with a chapter dedicated to each of them.

Finally, Web server tuning is the last (but not least) topic covered, which shows how to configure and develop web applications that get the most out of the embedded Tomcat web server.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Performance Tuning Concepts, discusses correct tuning methodology and how it fits in the overall software development cycle.

Chapter 2, Installing the Tools for Tuning, shows how to install and configure the instruments for tuning, including VisualVM, JMeter, Eclipse TPTP Platform, and basic OS tools.

Chapter 3, Tuning the Java Virtual Machine, provides an in-depth analysis of the JVM heap and garbage collector parameters, which are used to start up the application server.

Chapter 4, Tuning the JBoss AS, discusses the application server's core services including the JBoss System Thread Pool, the Connection Pool, and the Logging Service.

Chapter 5, Tuning the Middleware Services, covers the tuning of middleware services including the EJB and JMS services.

Chapter 6, Tuning the Persistence Layer, introduces the principles of good database design and the core concepts of Java Persistence API with special focus on JBoss's implementation (Hibernate).

Chapter 7, JBoss AS Cluster Tuning, covers JBoss Clustering service covering the low-level details of server communication and how to use JBoss Cache for optimal data replication and caching.

Chapter 8, Tomcat Web Server Tuning, covers the JBoss Web server performance tuning including mod_jk, mod_proxy, and mod_cluster modules.

Chapter 9, Tuning Web Applications on JBoss AS, discusses developing fast web applications using JSF API and JBoss richfaces libraries.

What you need for this book

A technical prerequisite for this book is knowledge of and expertise with the Java Enterprise API and the basics of the JBoss application server. Besides the technical skills, which are necessary to grasp the tuning concepts, no other requirements are necessary. As a matter of fact, all the software discussed in this book can be freely downloaded and used both in development and in production systems.

Who this book is for

This book is for Java architects who design and configure Enterprise applications. It is great for Java developers who want to get into the inner details of the application server and of the correct tuning methodology. Application testers will also find this book useful as they will learn how to monitor the performance of the middleware with the correct instruments.

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Chapter 1. Performance Tuning Concepts

All slow application abandon, ye who enter here. (Freely adapted from Dante's Divine Comedy Poem—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy)

Preface

One day like many, on a JBoss AS Forum:

"Hi

I am running the Acme project using JBoss 5.1.0. My requirement is to allow 1000 concurrent users to access the application. But when I try to access the application with 250 users, the server slows down and finally throws an exception Could not establish a connection with the database. Does anyone have an idea please help me to solve my problem.

In the beginning, performance was not a concern for software. Early programming languages like C or Cobol were doing a decent job of developing applications and the end user was just discovering the wonders of information technology that would allow him to save a lot of time.

Today we are all aware of the rapidly changing business environment in which we work and live and the impact it has on business and information technology. We recognize that an organization needs to deliver faster services to a larger set of people and companies, and that downtime or poor responses of those services will have a significant impact on the business.

To survive and thrive in such an environment, organizations must consider it an imperative task for their businesses to deliver applications faster than their competitors or they will risk losing potential revenue and reputation among customers.

So tuning an application in today's market is firstly a necessity for survival, but, there are even more subtle reasons, like using your system resources more efficiently. For example, if you manage to meet your system requirements with fewer fixed costs (let's say by using eight CPU machine instead of a 16 one) you are actually using your resources more efficiently and thus saving money. As an additional benefit you can also reduce some variable costs like the price of software licenses, which are usually calculated on the amount of CPUs used.

On the basis of these premises, it's time to reconsider the role of performance tuning in your software development cycle, and that's what this book aims to do.

What you will get from this book?

This book is an exhaustive guide to improving the performance of your Java EE applications running on JBoss AS and on the embedded web container (Jakarta Tomcat). All the guidelines and best practices contained in this book have been patiently collected through years of experience from the trenches and from the suggestions of valuable people, and ultimately in a myriad of blogs, and each one has contributed to improve the quality of this book.

The performance of an application running on the application server is the result of a complex interaction of many aspects. Like a puzzle, each piece contributes ultimately to define the performance of the final product. So our challenge will be to teach how to write fast applications on JBoss AS, but also how to tune all the components