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Profiling SAP ISA J2EE WEBAS with Netbeans / VisualVM

While this method of profiling is very nice, it requires running the Sap J2EE engine on java 6.0 which is not supported by SAP and causes some issues (ex: Visual admin issues).
If you are not comfortable with this, please see this alternate method (less convenient but works with Java 1.4):
Profiling SAP J2EE using Eclipse Memory Aanalizer

VisualVm is a nice profiler/grapher for Java virtual machines.
Here i explain how to use with SAP ISA to do some performance tuning / profiling / monitoring.

You can also just get VisualVM standalone, or use the built-in Netbeans profiler

One drawback is that like most of the new fancy tools, it requires the application to run on java 6, and SAP wants us to run on 1.4.

Anyhow to be able to profile the App I am running the whole SAP j2ee server under java 6 during the profiling session.

This doesn't seem to have any drawback(all works), except the visual administrator as an issue, though i found a fix for that too, see: other_generic_sap_tips

Telling SAP J2EE engine to run on java 6 and start the profiler agent

Using java 6

You will want to run the configtool and set the JAVA_HOME to use java 6 in the instance/dispatcher and server screens.

xhost +
su - ztbadm
export DISPLAY=:0.0
cd /usr/sap/ZTB/JC00/j2ee/configtool/
./configtool.sh

make sure you set all the JAVA_HOME fields to use a java 6 VM,
Be careful to check under each screen TABS (bootstrap)
Hopwever it seems J2EE will NOT start if I change the "global" or "dispatcher" jvm's to 1.6, so leave them those 1.4

Note that i also had to increase PermSize memory for the j2ee to run under java 6,
Add this parameter in the configtool (VM args).

-XX:PermSize=200m

This goes in the configtool, as a jvm arg, do this as you set the JAVA_HOME dir when you follow this doc.

Note, that you might also need to edit your PROFILE to make it use java 6, example:

/usr/sap/ZTB/SYS/profile/XYZ_JC00_myhost

SAPSYSTEMNAME = XYZ
SAPSYSTEM = 00
INSTANCE_NAME = JC00
DIR_CT_RUN = $(DIR_EXE_ROOT)/run
DIR_EXECUTABLE = $(DIR_INSTANCE)/exe
jstartup/trimming_properties = off
jstartup/protocol = on
#jstartup/vm/home = /usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun
############################ HERE - use java 6 ######################
jstartup/vm/home = /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
jstartup/max_caches = 500
jstartup/release = 700
jstartup/instance_properties = $(jstartup/j2ee_properties):$(jstartup/sdm_properties)
j2ee/dbdriver = /sapdb/programs/runtime/jar/sapdbc.jar
igs/listener/rfc/disable = 1
PHYS_MEMSIZE = 512
exe/saposcol = $(DIR_CT_RUN)/saposcol
rsdb/dbid = XYZ
dbs/ada/schema = SAPXYZ


#------------------------------------------------------------
# Jcontrol: Migrated Profile Parameter
#            create at Thu Sep 13 16:14:22 2007
#------------------------------------------------------------
j2ee/instance_id = ID0039456
#------------------------------------------------------------

The sap engine has to run under java 6+ for this to work.

After you are done, make sure to click the save icon and then quit configtool, then restart the engine (stopsap / startsap).

Using VisualVM

It's way easier to profile if the sap j2ee user is the same user that runs visualvm.

So we will run VisualVM as the sap user:

tcolar# xhost +
tcolar# sudo su - ztbadm
# now we are ztbadm
ztbadm# export DISPLAY=:0.0
# we need to use a java 6+ vm
ztbadm# /home/thibautc/apps/visualvm/bin/visualvm --jdkhome /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Now you should see the the sap server under visual vm (called "unknown application") and can do profiling etc...

Before you start profiling, make sure you set some filters (see screenshot) to only profile certain classes, profiling ALL the SAP classes is guaranteed to be a disaster.

Screenshots

Last modified: Thu Oct 07 16:49:11 EDT 2010 by Thibaut Colar

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