Server components are crashing at startup with out of memory errors

Products

• CA Application Test
• CA Continuous Application Insight (PathFinder)

Issue/Introduction

DevTest component - Registry, VSE, Coordinator, Simulator, stops responding or crashes during startup.

When looking at the log files we see the following error:

ERROR System.err                     - java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread

Environment

All supported DevTest releases.

Resolution

This out of memory error happens whenever the operating system, where DevTest is running, cannot allocate a new native thread. The limit for native threads is very platform-dependent. 

The command below should be executed to verify what are the open files and max user processes limits:

ulimit -an

If the value returned is less than 10240, then it should be increased. The system administrator needs to be consulted to have this value increased.

DevTest components need to be restarted after the max user processes limit is modified.