
You can take a heap dump by doing either of the following:
- Right-click the application in the Applications window and choose Heap Dump.
- Click Heap Dump in the Monitor tab of the application.
- Start administrative console.
- In the navigation pane, click Troubleshooting > Java dumps and cores.
- Select the server_name for which you want to generate the heap dump.
- Click Heap dump to generate the heap dump for your specified server.
How do I take a heap dump of a Java program?
You can use Java VisualVM to take a heap dump of a local running application. When you use Java VisualVM to take a heap dump, the file is only temporary until you explicitly save it. If you do not save the file, the file will be deleted when the application terminates.
What are the different types of Heap dumps?
Heap dumps have two formats: the Portable Heap Dump (PHD) format. PHD is the default format. The classic format is human-readable since it is in ASCII text, but the PHD format is binary and should be processed by appropriate tools for analysis.
What is the default view of a heap dump?
When you open a heap dump, Java VisualVM displays the Summary view by default. The Summary view displays the running environment where the heap dump was taken and other system properties.

Where can I get a heap dump?
Heap dumps are displayed in the heap dump sub-tab in the main window. You can open binary format heap dump files (. hprof) saved on your local system or use Java VisualVM to take heap dumps of running applications.
How do I manually take a heap dump?
Start the administrative console. In the navigation pane, click Troubleshooting > Java dumps and cores. Select the server_name for which you want to generate the heap dump. Click Heap dump to generate the heap dump for your specified server.
How do you do a heap dump analysis?
We will first start the Memory Analyzer Tool and open the heap dump file. In Eclipse MAT, two types of object sizes are reported: Shallow heap size: The shallow heap of an object is its size in the memory. Retained heap size: Retained heap is the amount of memory that will be freed when an object is garbage collected.
What is heap dump file?
A heap dump is a snapshot of all the objects that are in memory in the JVM at a certain moment. They are very useful to troubleshoot memory-leak problems and optimize memory usage in Java applications. Heap dumps are usually stored in binary format hprof files.
Where is Java heap dump created?
By default the heap dump is created in a file called java_pidpid. hprof in the working directory of the VM, as in the example above. You can specify an alternative file name or directory with the -XX:HeapDumpPath= option.
How do you create a thread dump in Java?
To generate a thread dump using jstack:Identify the process. Launch the task manager by, pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc and find the Process ID of the Java (Confluence) process. ... Run jstack
How do I take thread dump and heap dump?
Thread dump = stack traces for each thread in the JVM output to stdout as text. Heap dump = memory contents for the JVM process output to a binary file. To take a thread dump on Windows, CTRL + BREAK if your JVM is the foreground process is the simplest way.
How big is a heap dump?
What is the heap dump file size? The heap dump file size is actually 382 MiB.
How do you use a heap analyzer?
IBM HeapAnalyzerOpen a terminal or command prompt and change directory to where you downloaded the JAR file.Ensure that Java is on your PATH to run the tool.Launch the tool (increase -Xmx based on your available RAM): java -Xmx2g -jar ha*.jar.
How do you take a thread dump?
Ctrl + Break (Windows) In Windows operating systems, we can capture a thread dump using the CTRL and Break key combination. To take a thread dump, navigate to the console used to launch the Java application, and press the CTRL and Break keys together.
How do I open heap snapshot?
In DevTools, open the Memory tool. In the Select profiling type section, select the Heap snapshot option button. Click the Take snapshot button, and then click Start.
What is heap in memory?
A memory heap is a location in memory where memory may be allocated at random access. Unlike the stack where memory is allocated and released in a very defined order, individual data elements allocated on the heap are typically released in ways which is asynchronous from one another.
How do you take a heap dump in Windows?
Heap dump = memory contents for the JVM process output to a binary file. To take a thread dump on Windows, CTRL + BREAK if your JVM is the foreground process is the simplest way. If you have a unix-like shell on Windows like Cygwin or MobaXterm, you can use kill -3 {pid} like you can in Unix.
How do you take a thread dump?
Ctrl + Break (Windows) In Windows operating systems, we can capture a thread dump using the CTRL and Break key combination. To take a thread dump, navigate to the console used to launch the Java application, and press the CTRL and Break keys together.
What is JPS command?
The jps command uses the Java launcher to find the class name and arguments passed to the main method. If the target JVM is started with a custom launcher, then the class or JAR file name, and the arguments to the main method aren't available.
How do you get heap dump on Outofmemoryerror?
The parameter -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError can be set to enable heap dump when the JVM runs out of memory. You have set this parameter in the BW_JAVA_OPTS environment variable. By default the heapdump snapshot gets stored in the root location with the name java_pid1.
What is a Heap Dump?
Whenever we create a Java object by creating an instance of a class, it is always placed in an area known as the heap. Classes of the Java runtime are also created in this heap.
Sample Program to Generate an OutOfMemoryError
To explain the analysis of a heap dump, we will use a simple Java program to generate an OutOfMemoryError:
Finding the Root Cause of an OutOfMemoryError
We will now find the cause of this error by doing a heap dump analysis. This is done in two steps:
Analyzing the Heap Dump
After opening the heap dump, we will see an overview of the application’s memory usage. The piechart shows the biggest objects by retained size in the overview tab as shown here:
Conclusion
In this post, we introduced the heap dump, which is a snapshot of a Java application’s object memory graph at runtime. To illustrate, we captured the heap dump from a program that threw an OutOfMemoryError at runtime.
Why Heap dump is used, and what is its use?
Normally, this heap dump is used in the Java application we are using is taking up memory more than we expected, or the application crashed with the OutOfMemoryError. If we analyze the heap dump, it will help to identify the root cause of the anomaly.
Recommended Articles
This is a guide to Java heap dump. Here we discuss the description of the formats, tools, and techniques to create a Java Heap Dump is explained in detail. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –
1. Introduction
In this article, we'll show different ways to capture a heap dump in Java.
2. JDK Tools
The JDK comes with several tools to capture heap dumps in different ways. All these tools are located under the bin folder inside the JDK home directory. Therefore, we can start them from the command line as long as this directory is included in the system path.
3. Capture a Heap Dump Automatically
All the tools that we've shown in the previous sections are intended to capture heap dumps manually at a specific time. In some cases, we want to get a heap dump when a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError occurs so it helps us investigate the error.
5. Conclusion
In this tutorial, we've shown multiple ways to capture a heap dump in Java.
