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WebSphere Portal and JSF Memory Woes

If you use WebSphere Portal and JSF (Java Server Faces) and having issues with memory, garbage collection and slow performing Portal then you may want to review your JSF settings in your web.xml.  JSF is known to be a memory hog. By default it maintains 15 view states on the server side. These states are stored in user session and may last considerable amount of time on applications that require users to be logged in for the complete work day schedule. We found out on a typical 2GB heap size JVM, about 800 MB of memory is held by these JSF view states.  You can configure the number of “view states to save” in your web.xml file of your portal application.

Check out this tech note on details on changing the default number of view states saved from 15 to a lower number.   - https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21424426

We set  the number of view states  to 2 (from the default 15) and were surprised to find the reduction in session memory from 800 MB to to about 200 MB over 6-8 hour period. That was considerable savings on memory.

You can use the IBM Support Assistant – a free tool from IBM that provides a number of JVM problem analysis tool including a memory analyzer that enables you to look at heap dumps, thread dumps, logs etc. You can download this tool from the following location –   IBM Support Assistant

You can use the memory analyzer tool to inspect heap dumps  before and after changing this configuration and compare the memory usage by the key erring class that keeps the memory in session -  com.sun.faces.util.LRUMap. Attached are some screen shots on our findings.

Data using the default view states of 15:

Heap Distribution and com.sun.faces.util.LRUMap instance data

- Notice about 800 MB chunk of heap data that is attributed to com.sun.faces.util.LRUMap classes instances

Heap Data with default number of view states - 15

Instances and memory held by com.sun.faces.util.LRUMap class with default view states - 15

Data using the view states set to 2:

Heap Distribution and com.sun.faces.util.LRUMap instance data

- Notice that the amount of memory held has now come down to about 200 MB

Heap distribution with JSF states set to 2

Instances and memory held by sun.com.faces.util.LRUMap with JSF states set to 2

BigBlueButton

Ever wanted host your own application like  DimDim, GoToMeeting etc. to share and collaborate with your teams on demand and not pay any subscription fees ? Look at  the free open source alternative - BigBlueButton. If you have a Linux Server lying around, accessible on the internet or an Amazon EC2  account and a little savvy with Linux you could potentially host your own for almost free !

Leverage Putty, X-Deep/2 X-Server and XFCE4 for minimalistic X window experience on Linux Servers

This X-Deep/32 X-Server FAQ talks about how you can leverage free Putty tool and minimalistic X Window package XFCE4 that you can install on Linux Servers such as Ubuntu Server  etc, without overloading you Linux Servers running in a headless environment.  Use with cost effective Pexus X-Deep/32 X-Server solution to access Linux servers securely for common administration tasks right from your Windows desktop. With X-Deep/32 you can start multiple sessions each with it’s own instance of X-Server.

Registering your Suse Linux Enterprise

If you are using Suse Linux Enterprise distribution, it is important you get your updates and patches from Novell to maintain your support and authenticity of your distribution.

Each distribution has it’s own quirks and if you have worked with a different distribution such as Red Hat, CentOS or Ubuntu, it takes a while to get around and be familiar with the updates, patches, repositories etc.

Novell has 3 distributions that may be useful for enterprise customers. Novel SLE JEOS (Suse Enterprise Linux Just Enough OS – slimmed down OS), Novell Suse Linux Enterprise (SLE) Server/Desktop and Novell Suse Linux Enterprise for VMware.

There is a new tool called  zypper that lets you register and manage your updates and patch levels.

To register your product (applies to Novell Business Partners). you will have to get an activiation code.  Login to your Novell site and based on your entitlements, you can obtain the registration code. Use the following command to register your SLE and refresh your zypper environment.

suse_register -a email=your_email -a regcode-sles=your_registration_code

zypper refresh

After registration list the update repositories that are added to your zypper environment.

zypper lr

For more information refer:

http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/RegandUpdate_SLE10.html

http://www.novell.com/documentation/sle_jeos10/pdfdoc/sles_10_jeos_guide/sles_10_jeos_guide.pdf

 

 

Finding Suse SLE S/D version

On Linux (and UNIX) uname -a command gives the version of the kernel. Each distribution has it’s own version numbering.
For Suse SLE S/D if you want to find the version and patch level of your distribution, use the command – cat /etc/SuSE-release

Configuring Suse Linux Networking manually

Networking is the first thing you would do after installation of a Linux OS (for that matter any system OS). If you are dealing with a server, chances are you don’t have a GUI at hand. Most Linux distributions have different utilities to handle network configuration.  Here are links to Novell Suse Enterprise Linux documentation.

All  Novell Docs -> http://www.novell.com/documentation/index.html

SLE11 Network Configuration Link -> http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles11/book_sle_admin/data/sec_basicnet_manconf.html

Dedicated banking Virtual Machine!

Do you do internet banking a lot ? I am sure we all worry about internet security and the constant need to protect our computers. There are number of viruses and malware that specifically target your banking web sites. Despite the efforts by the banking industry to protect consumers from these there are number of cases where the security has been breached and will continue to do so in future. If you think about it, how do viruses get in to your computer ? They find their way via e-mail, websites, free software, social networking and other common day to day internet related activities. You can protect your computer by dedicating a computer for use for  banking applications only, so that you use that dedicated computer to visit your bank web sites and refrain from doing any other day to day internet related activities with that. This way you can be assured that you will not provide any means for the viruses to enter your computer. Setting up a separate computer for just banking is not very convinient both from a cost and usage perspective.

This is where virtualzation technology such as VMware, Virtual PC or widely avaiable free Linux virtualization solutions can come in handy. Set up a virtual machines just for banking applications within your laptop or primary PC and ensure you don’t do any other internet related activites using that virtual machine. This way you can be assured, your virtual machine environment will be free of viruses and malware.

Pexus LLC is passionate about vitualization technology. We offer number of solutions to solve a range of IT application management problems. Come and talk to us how virtualization technology can help solve yours.

Visit – http://www.pexus.com

Error opening OVF files using VMware Workstation

I have tried to open quite a few OVF files using VMware Workstation 7.1 and VMware Player, but I keep getting the error such as “Failed to query source for information” or when trying to import the OVF file – “The OVF descriptor file could not be parsed”. Not sure why this is not handled correctly even with the latest version of VMware software.

I found that if you convert the OVF file to a virtual machine using the VMware converter it works fine.

Sofware Appliances 101

Want to know the buzz around software appliances ?
Check out this -> Software Appliances .

Contact us to see how we can custom build software appliances for IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager – ITCAM for all your enterprise monitoing needs – from transactions to resources to SOA and application diagnostics. (http://www.pexus.com)