Legacy Visual Policy Manager (VPM) could not be launched due to Java garbage collector's memory heap size.

Products

• ProxySG Software - SGOS

Issue/Introduction

Legacy Visual Policy Manager (VPM) could not be launched.

It does not show any error message, the VPM does not load correctly and may appear to hang.

The policy is complex and large in size greater than 15 MB of policy.

The machine that launches the VPM has low physical memory installed E.g 4GB only.

Environment

Release : 6.7 and 7.x

Component : VPM/Java

Cause

There could be multiple factors that could have caused the issue, one example being the Java garbage collector's memory heap size been allocated initially.

The default or initial memory heap size depends on the machine's physical memory based on the article below:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/vm/gc-ergonomics.html

Where it mentions the following:

initial heap size:

Larger of 1/64th of the machine's physical memory on the machine or some reasonable minimum. Before J2SE 5.0, the default initial heap size was a reasonable minimum, which varies by platform. You can override this default using the -Xms command-line option.

 

So with the above example of a given machine's physical memory with only 4GB and the proxy's policy is complex and big with over 15 MB of policy size, the 1/64th of 4GB is equivalent to 62.5 MB of memory heap is not sufficient enough to launched the VPM.

Resolution

Increase the Java's garbage collector memory heap size.

Using the example above, set the minimum memory heap size higher than the initial heap size E.g to 512 MB by adding the parameter as shown below.