JIRA/Confluence ran out of the Memory, how can I release memory

[willie]

Hi All

My JIRA/Confluence System almost run out of my Memory, how can I release memory or how can I reduce using Memory?

Environment is On-Premium 

1. 3 container structure

2. JIRA + Confluence + Mysql 

PS: The system uses very low memory when the VM restarts.

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@willie Welcome to the Atlassian community

You should review your hardware requirements here for Confluence and Jira as you might need additional resources.  Remember that additional apps installed on each instance will increase the amount of resources needed.

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/jira-applications-installation-requirements-938846826.html 
• https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/server-hardware-requirements-guide-30736403.html 

After you have confirmed that you have the proper amount of resources for the size of your instances you should start with tuning your instance (Jira and Confluence) to improve performance.

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/tuning-garbage-collection-gc-945105109.html 
• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/server-optimization-938847889.html 
• https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/tuning-database-connections-938846864.html 
• https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/performance-tuning-130289.html 

[willie]

Hi Brant 

Thanks for your response, In fact, we use the on-premise server for a long time, but unfortunately, the data increase very quickly for the last few years, so right now the VM server has a Memory issue, hopefully, you maybe can give us some user guidelines by GUI setup(if it has, it will be easy for me) for release or reduce memory usage.  

Thanks again, Willie

PS: System status 

4 CUP

32G Memory

[Brant Schroeder]

@willie My guess is that you will need to increase the memory.  What are your instances sizes? (Jira and Confluence)  

Jira

• How many users?
• How many concurrent users?
• How many issues?
• How many comments?
• How many custom fields?

Confluence

• How many users?
• How many concurrent users?
• How many spaces?
• How many pages?

[willie]

To increase the memory is the only way?  or Could I modify JIRA/Confluence Memory setting with Setenv.sh file for reducing memory?

Jira 

• How many users?     209 active
• How many concurrent users?
• How many issues?   
• How many comments?
• How many custom fields?

Confluence

• How many users?     209 active
• How many concurrent users?
• How many spaces?
• How many pages?

PS: 

Confluence 

JIRA

[Tom Lister]

Hi @willie 

Are you actually getting out of memory errors thrown by the apps? Your stats look healthy.

Or are you looking at the overall usage on the server? 
With Jira, confluence and the db on  one machine you will have high usage. You have 3 atlassian Have processes , the DB and the o/s and only 32gb overall.

The JVM params you have shared are reasonable

In the Jira system info page you can confirm whether they have been applied and see the current usage.

The garbage collection in the JVM will claim back unused memory. Are you seeing spikes? Try to identify what the apps are doing at those times. Backups to XML are quite heavy and not viable once a system gets very large.

[Brant Schroeder]

@willie It looks like the heaps are fairly healthy.  You have to understand that when you allocate memory to Java it will take all of it on the system and will end up managing it.    Just because a lot of the memory is being used does not mean that the system is not running well.  Are you having application degradation?  Is the server crashing? 

[willie]

@Brant Schroeder @Tom Lister 
The server has to restart 1 or 2 times per month because of the server crashing(Jira/Confluence login page can't open, and sometimes I need to restart VM by force). Depending on your suggestion, the only way should be to increase VM Memory, isn't it? 

PS: 

1. Jira + Confluence data more than 1T right now.

2. How much memory do I need to increase for 1T Data?

3. If data raise to 2T, how much memory will be used? (How much memory for 3T or 4T)

4. If I ignore the Backups plan from automation to manual control, it is a good way to release/reduce memory.

System Monitor (CPU/Memory usage rate for 2 weeks)

Thanks very much again for your full support 

Willie

[Tom Lister]

Hi @willie 

I agree with @Brant Schroeder 

Your memory settings for the sizes of your apps are reasonable. The volume of data in the DB won't affect memory unless you run some app that tries to load large chunks of it. That is why backups can be very resource heavy.

The actual used memory is usually a bit larger than the limits set in the JVM startup params. These params relate to the 'heap' and there is more going on under the hood than that.

The combination of Jira, Confluence/Synchrony and the DB are using the available server memory. So your options are to increase the memory on this server - 48Gb, 64Gb - and see if that gives you a higher ceiling. The JVM usage should be constrained by their memory params so not rise to occupy available space.. The DB usage I can't comment on.

You can try spreading the apps over more that one machine. Maybe start with putting the database on a separate server.

These links are interesting.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-use-java-native-memory-tracking-nmt-to-obtain-jvm-memory-usage-details-961252427.html

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21272877/understanding-jvm-memory-allocation-and-java-out-of-memory-heap-space

https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2021/09/09/how-jvm-uses-and-allocates-memory#

[Tom Lister]

Hi @willie 

Welcome

It looks like you are running Jira, Confluence (probably with separate Synchrony process) and the MySQL db on the same machine.

None of the process seem to be using excessive memory. Jira and Confluence allocation will be limited to the  -Xmx setting on the JVM at startup.

Your server is probably no longer sufficient to host all these services on one machine.

[willie]

Hi Tom

Thanks very much for your response, Could you teach me how to allocate Jira and Confluence Min/Max memory with my server hardware(Physical MM 32G )

JIRA

Confluence

PS: System environment

1. Azure VM(4CPU/32G)

2. 4 containers in 1 VM (jira+confluence+mysql+nginx)

Thanks,

Willie 

[Tom Lister]

Hi @willie 

I’m not online today. If you Google ”Jira memory setting Xmx” there are a lot of good explanations out there.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/managing-application-server-memory-settings-32899336.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/increasing-jira-application-memory-938847654.html