Use this task to enable automated heap dump generation on AIX, Linux, and Windows operating systems.
Before you begin
Although heap dumps are only generated in response to a detected memory leak, you must understand that generating heap dumps can have a severe performance impact on the Application Server for several minutes.Why and when to perform this task
To help you analyze memory leak problems when memory leak detection occurs, some automated heap dump generation support is available.To enable automated heap dump generation support, perform the following steps in the administrative console:
Steps for this task
Result
The automated heap dump generation support is enabled.Important: To preserve disk space, the Runtime Performance Advisor does not take heap dumps if more than 10 heap dumps already exist in the WebSphere Application Server home directory. Depending on the size of the heap and the workload on the application server, taking a heap dump might be quite expensive and might temporarily affect system performance.
What to do next
You can monitor any notifications of memory leaks by checking the SystemOut.log file or Runtime Messages. For more information, see the Viewing the Runtime Performance Advisor recommendations topic. If a memory leak is detected and you want to find the heap dump, refer to the Locating and analyzing heap dumps topic.Related informationGenerating heap dumps manually
Locating and analyzing heap dumps