Java agent 10.7.0.115 on Web Sphere 8.5 wont start - A problem occurred while attempting to create the delegate agent

Products

• CA Application Performance Management Agent (APM / Wily / Introscope)
• INTROSCOPE

Issue/Introduction

We are getting following error when trying to start 10.7SP2 WebSphere agent with Using Java VM version "IBM J9 VM 1.7.0" from IBM Corporation

2/22/19 03:03:44 PM CET [ERROR] [IntroscopeAgent.Agent] A problem occurred while attempting to create the delegate agent

Environment

Release:
Component: APMAGT

Resolution

The message is usually an indication that a class has been detetcted that has been compiled with an incomptaible Java version. One possible cause of such error could be some older versions of java classes being cached and causing conflicts when being mistaken for the updated version.This is particularly relevent in an IBM JVM environment due to the shared class cache feature where you may have multiple JVMs but not all using the same Agent version potentially resulting in conflicts.

For IBM JVMs the feature can be disabled by adding the JVM argument. -Xshareclasses:none

Additional Information

For more info on this JVM feature see

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSYKE2_7.1.0/com.ibm.java.lnx.71.doc/user/classdatasharing.html