Technical Tip: How to Increase Java Heap space (for the app server)

This article explains how to increase Java Heap Space for the app server to avoid memory errors.

Deploying the app server may fail with the following error.

Error occurred during deployment: Exception while loading the app : java.lang.IllegalStateException: ContainerBase.addChild: start: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space. Please see server.log for more details.

1) Backup the current domain.xml file.

# cp /opt/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml /opt/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml.bkp

2) Open the domain.xml file with a text editor.

# vi /opt/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml

3) Locate the values below and increase them both to 7680m or 10240m (Xmx and Xms must be the same):

<jvm-options>-Xmx5120m</jvm-options>
<jvm-options>-Xms5120m</jvm-options>

It is not recommended to increase the values higher than 10GB.

4) Restart the app server or try to deploy it again.

# killall -9 java

5) Check that java starts with the new Xmx and Xms values.

# ps aux | grep java | grep Xm