Limiting Java 8 Memory Consumption - jvm-arguments

Question

I'm running three Java 8 JVMs on a 64 bit Ubuntu VM which was built from a minimal install with nothing extra running other than the three JVMs. The VM itself has 2GB of memory and each JVM was limited by -Xmx512M which I assumed would be fine as there would be a couple of hundred MB spare.
A few weeks ago, one crashed and the hs_err_pid dump showed:
# There is insufficient memory for the Java Runtime Environment to continue.
# Native memory allocation (mmap) failed to map 196608 bytes for committing reserved memory.
# Possible reasons:
# The system is out of physical RAM or swap space
# In 32 bit mode, the process size limit was hit
# Possible solutions:
# Reduce memory load on the system
# Increase physical memory or swap space
# Check if swap backing store is full
# Use 64 bit Java on a 64 bit OS
# Decrease Java heap size (-Xmx/-Xms)
# Decrease number of Java threads
# Decrease Java thread stack sizes (-Xss)
# Set larger code cache with -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=
# This output file may be truncated or incomplete.
I restarted the JVM with a reduced heap size of 384MB and so far everything is fine. However when I currently look at the VM using the ps command and sort in descending RSS size I see
RSS %MEM VSZ PID CMD
708768 35.4 2536124 29568 java -Xms64m -Xmx512m ...
542776 27.1 2340996 12934 java -Xms64m -Xmx384m ...
387336 19.3 2542336 6788 java -Xms64m -Xmx512m ...
12128 0.6 288120 1239 /usr/lib/snapd/snapd
4564 0.2 21476 27132 -bash
3524 0.1 5724 1235 /sbin/iscsid
3184 0.1 37928 1 /sbin/init
3032 0.1 27772 28829 ps ax -o rss,pmem,vsz,pid,cmd --sort -rss
3020 0.1 652988 1308 /usr/bin/lxcfs /var/lib/lxcfs/
2936 0.1 274596 1237 /usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon
..
..
and the free command shows
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1952 1657 80 20 213 41
Swap: 0 0 0
Taking the first process as an example, there is an RSS size of 708768 KB even though the heap limit would be 524288 KB (512*1024).
I am aware that extra memory is used over the JVM heap but the question is how can I control this to ensure I do not run out of memory again ? I am trying to set the heap size for each JVM as large as I can without crashing them.
Or is there a good general guideline as to how to set JVM heap size in relation to overall memory availability ?

Answer 1

There does not appear to be a way of controlling how much extra memory the JVM will use over the heap. However by monitoring the application over a period of time, a good estimate of this amount can be obtained. If the overall consumption of the java process is higher than desired, then the heap size can be reduced. Further monitoring is needed to see if this impacts performance.
Continuing with the example above and using the command ps ax -o rss,pmem,vsz,pid,cmd --sort -rss we see usage as of today is
RSS %MEM VSZ PID CMD
704144 35.2 2536124 29568 java -Xms64m -Xmx512m ...
429504 21.4 2340996 12934 java -Xms64m -Xmx384m ...
367732 18.3 2542336 6788 java -Xms64m -Xmx512m ...
13872 0.6 288120 1239 /usr/lib/snapd/snapd
..
..
These java processes are all running the same application but with different data sets. The first process (29568) has stayed stable using about 190M beyond the heap limit while the second (12934) has reduced from 156M to 35M. The total memory usage of the third has stayed well under the heap size which suggests the heap limit could be reduced.
It would seem that allowing 200MB extra non heap memory per java process here would be more than enough as that gives 600MB leeway total. Subtracting this from 2GB leaves 1400MB so the three -Xmx parameter values combined should be less than this amount.
As will be gleaned from reading the article pointed out in a comment by Fairoz there are many different ways in which the JVM can use non heap memory. One of these that is measurable though is the thread stack size. The default for a JVM can be found on linux using java -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version | grep ThreadStackSize In the case above it is 1MB and as there are about 25 threads, we can safely say that at least 25MB extra will always be required.