Multiple JVMs in OAS

It may be advantageous, performance-wise, to configure multiple JVMs to run a single JAS instance rather than a single, larger JVM. Server Manager has made it easy to configure and utilize multiple JVMs and enhancements in the 8.97 tools release ensure there are no conflicts with log files.

A multi-JVM configuration allows a single URL to be load balanced onto two or more JVM processes for a single OC4J container. The Apache http server will automatically load balance users onto a particular JVM where their session will remain for the duration of their sign-in. A multi-JVM setup is not a failover clustering configuration; that is, if a JVM were to crash all the user sessions on that JVM will also terminate.

The number of simultaneous JVMs is configured at the OC4J container level. To view or modify the JVM count navigate to the management page for the Oracle Application Server within Server Manager. In the middle of the page you will see a section listing each J2EE container (OC4J instance) within the OAS instance.


Listed next to each OC4J instance is the JVM Processes edit and a list of active JVMs if the container is currently running. To modify the JVM processes edit and save the change. Changes will take effect the next time the container is started. Starting or stopping a JAS instance within server manager starts/stops the corresponding container.

Runtime Metrics

Server Manager will automatically detect the multi-JVM configuration and display all the runtime metrics (user sessions, database caches, et. al) separately for each JVM. Each JVM is assigned, by OAS, a unique JVM identifier. This ID is in the format container_name.group_name.index, where container_name is the name of the OC4J instance, group_name is the name of the OAS defined group to which the container belongs, and index is an integer beginning with 1 and incremented for each JVM started.



Shown above is the runtime summary displayed within the management page for a JAS server. It shows the number of active JVMs (2) and the uptime, online users, and login status for each JVM. Selecting a runtime metric, in this case JDBJ Database Caches, will display the metrics separately for each active JVM:


Configuration

Each JVM will utilize the same configuration files. As such it is not necessary to configure items for each JVM. In fact, it is not possible to configure items separately for each JVM.

Log Files

Since each JVM utilizes the same configuration files, including the jdelog.properties file using to configure the E1 logging, creating and writing to the log files would historically conflict in a multi-JVM environment. Tools release 8.97 will now automatically detect a multi-JVM environment and append the JVM ID, described above, into the filename for JVMs with a process index of 2 or greater as shown below:


Compatibility

Multiple JVM configuration is supported only for the EnterpriseOne HTML (JAS) server. Configuring multiple JVMs for the other E1 web products, such as the Transaction Server, PIMSync Server, or Business Services Server is not supported and may cause unpredictable results.

UPDATE:
While playing around with this I discovered that making changes to the JVM count on a running container will take effect immediately. That is if you have a container that is configured for a single JVM and change the value to 3 you will see two more java processes appear (after a few minutes). Changing this back to 1 will shut down the additional JVMs. Note: I do not know if it will shut down JVMs with active users on it.

This is pretty cool and can be used to aid a HTML server that is getting overloaded without having to restart it.