Key Java runtime metrics to monitor
Heap memory utilization
Track Eden, Survivor, and Old Generation memory spaces. Identify memory leaks and inefficiencies early.
Garbage collection activity
Monitor garbage collection (GC) frequency and duration. Detect GC pauses or excessive collection cycles affecting app latency.
Thread states
Track live, daemon, peak, and sleeping threads. Ensure proper thread pool usage and concurrency handling.
Class loading/unloading
Observe how many classes are loaded/unloaded in real time to catch anomalies in dynamic loading scenarios.
Why is it important to monitor your java runtime
Java applications are only as reliable as their runtime performance. Issues like memory leaks, blocked threads, or inefficient garbage collection can silently degrade the user experience before they trigger full-blown outages. Java runtime monitoring gives you the ability to detect these issues early, reduce MTTR, and ensure application responsiveness under all loads.
Benefits of Java runtime monitoring
- Detect and fix memory leaks before they cause out of memory (OOM) errors
- Optimize garbage collection settings for high-throughput applications
- Improve request processing by tuning thread pools
- Reduce downtime with early alerts on JVM pressure
- Accelerate root cause analysis with correlated metrics
How Site24x7 helps monitor your Java runtime
Site24x7’s APM Insight agent offers comprehensive Java runtime monitoring. It collects and visualizes JVM-level metrics with minimal overhead and integrates tightly with application performance monitoring.
- Real-time dashboards for heap, GC, threads, and more
- Threshold-based and anomaly-detection alerts
- Correlated views with transaction traces and logs
- Auto-discovery of JVMs via agents in containers or VMs
- Long-term trend analysis with historical views
Use cases: Solving real Java runtime issues
| Problem | Root cause found using runtime monitoring | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| OutOfMemoryError | Heap memory not reclaimed due to reference leaks; faulty caching logic holding strong references preventing garbage collection | Identified and fixed caching logic to release unused references, preventing memory leaks |
| GC pauses | Frequent full GC cycles observed under load, causing application pauses | Tuned GC algorithm (e.g., switched to G1GC) and adjusted heap sizing based on GC logs and JVM metrics |
| Excessive sleeping threads | Inefficient waiting/sleeping causing delayed responsiveness and thread blocking | Replace Thread.sleep() with proper wait/notify or concurrency utilities; optimize thread usage |
Start monitoring your Java runtime in minutes
Check for prerequisites
Install the Java APM agent
View live runtime metrics