In this session, we will dive into three major outages at Fortune 500 enterprises. By analyzing thread dumps, heap dumps, and GC logs captured during these incidents, you will uncover practical strategies to troubleshoot CPU spikes, OutOfMemoryErrors, and application unresponsiveness. You will walk away with actionable techniques to enhance your problem-solving skills, all grounded in real-world examples and expert insights.

1. Troubleshooting JVM Outages
3 Fortune 500
Case Studies
Ram Lakshmanan
Architect yCrash

2. 2
Slowdown
Major Financial Institution in N. America
Analysis Report: https://tinyurl.com/5da3ft8z

3. Open-source script:
https://github.com/ycrash/yc-data-script
1. GC Log
10. netstat
12. vmstat
2. Thread Dump
9. dmesg
3. Heap Dump
6. ps
8. Disk Usage
5. top 13. iostat
11. ping
14. Kernel Params
15. App Logs
16. metadata
4. Heap Substitute
7. top -H
3
360° Troubleshooting artifacts
./yc –p <PROCESS_ID> -hd

4. What is a Thread Dump?
Threads: Blood System of Your Applicatio
https://blog.fastthread.io/understanding-java-thread-dumps/

5. 1 2
3
1
Timestamp at which thread dump was triggered
2 JVM Version info
3
Thread Details - <<details in following slides>>
5
2023-09-16 17:13:23

6. 1 2 3 4 5
6
7
1
Thread Name - InvoiceThread-A996
2
Priority - Can have values from 1 to 10
3
Thread Id - 0x00002b7cfc6fb000 – Unique ID assigned by JVM. It's returned by calling the Thread.getId() method.
4
Native Id - 0x4479 - This ID is highly platform dependent. On Linux, it's the pid of the thread. On Windows, it's simply the OS-level thread ID within
a process. On Mac OS X, it is said to be the native pthread_t value.
5
Address space - 0x00002b7d17ab8000 -
6
Thread State - RUNNABLE
7 Stack trace -
6

7. How to analyze Thread dump?
https://www.ibm.com/support/pa
ges/ibm-thread-and-monitor-du
mp-analyzer-java-tmda
IBM TDMA
FastThread
https://fastthread.io/
03
02
https://tinyurl.com/wq95weo
Sample thread
report
yCrash
https://ycrash.io/
01
7

8. How To Do Thread Dump Analysis
8
https://youtu.be/MFOPb3PZXPA?si=FDSwEj0a5adhoW5f

9. 9
Poor Response Time
Major Cloud Service Provider
Blog: https://blog.gceasy.io/garbage-collection-tuning-success-story-reducing-young-gen-size/

10. What is Garbage?
HTTP Request
Objects
Memory
Garbage
10

11. 11
3 Decades ago
Developer
Writes code to Manually evict Garbage
JVM
Automatically evicts Garbage
Now
How are objects Garbage Collected?
Evolution: Manual -> Automatic

12. 12
Automatic GC sounds good right?
Yes, but for
GC pauses CPU consumption

13. Open-source script:
https://github.com/ycrash/yc-data-script
1. GC Log
10. netstat
12. vmstat
2. Thread Dump
9. dmesg
3. Heap Dump
6. ps
8. Disk Usage
5. top 13. iostat
11. ping
14. Kernel Params
15. App Logs
16. metadata
4. Heap Substitute
7. top -H
13
360° Troubleshooting artifacts

14. 2019-08-31T01:09:19.397+0000: 1.606: [GC (Metadata GC Threshold) [PSYoungGen: 545393K->18495K(2446848K)] 545393K->18519K(8039424K),
0.0189376 secs] [Times: user=0.15 sys=0.01, real=0.02 secs]
2019-08-31T01:09:19.416+0000: 1.625: [Full GC (Metadata GC Threshold) [PSYoungGen: 18495K->0K(2446848K)] [ParOldGen: 24K->17366K(5592576K)]
18519K->17366K(8039424K), [Metaspace: 20781K->20781K(1067008K)], 0.0416162 secs] [Times: user=0.38 sys=0.03, real=0.04 secs]
2019-08-31T01:18:19.288+0000: 541.497: [GC (Metadata GC Threshold) [PSYoungGen: 1391495K->18847K(2446848K)] 1408861K->36230K(8039424K),
0.0568365 secs] [Times: user=0.31 sys=0.75, real=0.06 secs]
2019-08-31T01:18:19.345+0000: 541.554: [Full GC (Metadata GC Threshold) [PSYoungGen: 18847K->0K(2446848K)] [ParOldGen: 17382K-
>25397K(5592576K)] 36230K->25397K(8039424K), [Metaspace: 34865K->34865K(1079296K)], 0.0467640 secs] [Times: user=0.31 sys=0.08, real=0.04 secs]
2019-08-31T02:33:20.326+0000: 5042.536: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2097664K->11337K(2446848K)] 2123061K->36742K(8039424K),
0.3298985 secs] [Times: user=0.00 sys=9.20, real=0.33 secs]
2019-08-31T03:40:11.749+0000: 9053.959: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2109001K->15776K(2446848K)] 2134406K->41189K(8039424K),
0.0517517 secs] [Times: user=0.00 sys=1.22, real=0.05 secs]
2019-08-31T05:11:46.869+0000: 14549.079: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2113440K->24832K(2446848K)] 2138853K->50253K(8039424K),
0.0392831 secs] [Times: user=0.02 sys=0.79, real=0.04 secs]
2019-08-31T06:26:10.376+0000: 19012.586: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2122496K->25600K(2756096K)] 2147917K->58149K(8348672K),
0.0371416 secs] [Times: user=0.01 sys=0.75, real=0.04 secs]
2019-08-31T07:50:03.442+0000: 24045.652: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2756096K->32768K(2763264K)] 2788645K->72397K(8355840K),
0.0709641 secs] [Times: user=0.16 sys=1.39, real=0.07 secs]
2019-08-31T09:04:21.406+0000: 28503.616: [GC (Allocation Failure) [PSYoungGen: 2763264K->32768K(2733568K)] 2802893K->83469K(8326144K),
0.0789178 secs] [Times: user=0.12 sys=1.59, real=0.08 secs]
Sample GC Log

15. How to analyze GC Log?
https://developer.ibm.c
om/javasdk/tools/
IBM GC & Memory visualizer
GCeasy
yCrash
https://gceasy.io/
Google Garbage cat (cms)
https://code.google.co
m/archive/a/eclipselabs
.org/p/garbagecat
HP Jmeter
https://h20392.www2.h
pe.com/portal/swdepot
/displayProductInfo.do?
productNumber=HPJME
TER
03
02
01
05
04
https://ycrash.io/
15

16. GC Throughput
16
96% GC Throughput means
Application is spending 96% of it’s time in processing customer transactions. Remaining 4% of time
in processing GC activities.
What is 96% GC Throughput?
1 day has 1440 minutes (i.e. 24 hours x 60 minutes)
4% = 57.6 minutes/day/JVM is stopping

17. How to Tune GC Performance?
17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udFJm7u0Pv0

18. 18
More GC Tuning case
studies
Uber Saves Millions of $
https://blog.gceasy.io/2022/03/04/garbage-collection-tuning-success-story-reducing-young-gen-size/
Large Automobile Manufacturer Improves Response Time
https://blog.gceasy.io/2022/03/04/garbage-collection-tuning-success-story-reducing-young-gen-size/
CloudBees (Jenkins Parent company) optimizes
https://blog.gceasy.io/2019/08/01/cloudbees-gc-performance-optimized-with-gceasy/
Oracle optimizes App performance by tuning GC
https://blog.gceasy.io/2022/12/06/oracle-architect-optimizes-performance-using-gceasy/

19. 19
Large SaaS company CEO’s tweet

20. Intermittent HTTP 502 Errors
20
Major Travel Service Provider

21. EBS Architecture
21

22. Clue: Nginx Error
22

23. 1. GC Log
10. netstat
12. vmstat
2. Thread Dump
9. dmesg
3. Heap Dump
6. ps
8. Disk Usage
5. top 13. iostat
11. ping
14. Kernel Params
15. App Logs
16. metadata
4. Heap Substitute
7. top -H
23
Open-source script:
https://github.com/ycrash/yc-data-script
360° Data

24. 24

25. CPU Spike (Bonus)
25
Major Trading App in N. America
ttps://blog.fastthread.io/2020/04/23/troubleshooting-cpu-spike-in-a-major-trading-applicati

26. top –H –p <PROCESS_ID>’
Secrete Option:
26
We might have used ‘top’

27. 1. GC Log
10. netstat
12. vmstat
2. Thread Dump
9. dmesg
3. Heap Dump
6. ps
8. Disk Usage
5. top 13. iostat
11. ping
14. Kernel Params
15. App Logs
16. metadata
4. Heap Substitute
7. top -H
27
Open-source script:
https://github.com/ycrash/yc-data-script
360° Troubleshooting artifacts

28. Ram Lakshmanan ram@tier1app.com
@tier1app https://www.linkedin.com/company/ycrash
This deck will be published in:
https://blog.ycrash.io
28
THANK YOU
FRIENDS