Optimizing Sun GlassFish™ Enterprise
Server Performance
For Sun Open Network Systems
Highlights
• Support Web 2.0 environments with
Sun GlassFish™ Enterprise Server
• Take advantage of massively
threaded Sun servers with
CoolThreads™ technology
• Optimize deployments with the
Performance Advisor
• Gain up to 8x performance
improvement with software
optimizations
With users working, collaborating, shopping,
and doing more on the Web, companies are
looking for high-performance application
servers to keep pace and satisfy demand.
Sun GlassFish™ Enterprise Server is a fast1,
open source application server that offers
significant price/performance advantages
over proprietary application servers.
Designed for scalability, the software can
take advantage of the unique performance
characteristics of Sun servers incorporating
UltraSPARC® T1, T2, and T2 Plus processors
with chip multithreading technology (CMT) to
deliver needed performance.
The combination of Sun servers with chip multithreading
technology and Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server delivers
high performance to Web 2.0 environments.
Sun servers with CoolThreads™ technology
The UltraSPARC T-series processor family—the
industry’s first family of massively threaded,
System on a Chip (SoC) processors—offers
breakthrough performance and energy
efficiency to drive Web 2.0 infrastructure
and address other demanding datacenter
challenges. Providing next-generation chip
multithreading technology, the processors
provide high throughput characteristics—
up to 64 threads of compute power per
processor socket and up to four processors
in a single server, for up to 256 threads of
compute power in four rack units. As a result,
Sun servers incorporating these powerful
processors provide increased computational
density while staying within constrained
power and cooling envelopes.
Sun servers with chip multithreading
technology take advantage of very high levels
of integration to help reduce latency, lower
costs, and improve security and reliability.
Balanced system designs provide compute
cores, a memory interface, virtualization
technologies, a variety of standards-based
input/output interfaces, and hardware
acceleration for data encryption directly
on the processor die—all at no additional
cost. Table 1 provides an overview of the
family of scalable Sun servers incorporating
CoolThreads™ technology.
Sun’s first-, second-, and next-generation CMT
processors are an unprecedented success.
Today, Sun Fire™ and Sun SPARC Enterprise®
servers and blades based on UltraSPARC
T-series processors with CoolThreads™
technology continue to win enthusiastic
praise. Now CMT technology is evolving
rapidly to meet the constantly changing
demands of a wide range of Web 2.0 and
associated applications.
Attaining optimal performance
Attaining optimal performance for a target
environment often requires significant skill,
and a time-consuming trial and error process.
With Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v2.1,
Sun introduced the Enterprise Manager, a
tool for improving the manageability and
performance of production deployments.
Sun Microsystems: Solution Brief
2 Optimizing Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server Performance

Table 1. Summary of Sun servers with CoolThreads technology environments with high demands. When run
on servers with many processors or processor
Server Features cores, such as Sun servers with CMT, the
Performance Advisor can be applied to help
improve performance significantly.
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 2 CPUs with up to 8 cores, up to 128 threads and 256 GB memory
T6340 Server Module • Up to 6 drive interface connections
Optimizing with Performance Analyzer
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 1 CPU with up to 8 cores, up to 64 threads and 128 GB memory Included with Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server
T6320 Server Module • Up to 8 drive interface connections subscriptions, the Performance Analyzer can
be used to optimize performance based on
Sun SPARC Enterprise • Up to 8 CPUs, 64 cores, 256 threads, and 512 GB memory the hardware architecture. Indeed, tuning the
T5440 Server • 4 network slots, up to 1.2 TB internal storage and 4 SSDs software to take advantage of the underlying
platform can help speed performance. For
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 2 CPUs with up to 8 cores, up to 128 threads and 256 GB memory example, Sun used the Performance Analyzer
T5240 Server • 4 network slots, up to 4.8 TB internal storage and 8 SSDs to tune the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server
to take advantage of the large number of
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 1 CPU with 4 or 8 cores, up to 64 threads and 128 GB memory processor threads available on CMT servers
T5220 Server • 4 network slots, up to 4.8 TB internal storage and 4 SSDs in general, and Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220
servers in particular, to increase scalability.
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 2 CPUs with up to 8 cores, up to 128 threads and 128 GB memory
T5140 Server • 4 network slots, up to 2.4 TB internal storage and 4 SSDs Platform configuration and optimization
For the tuning effort, Sun utilized a Sun SPARC
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 1 CPU with 4 or 8 cores, up to 64 threads and 128 GB memory Enterprise T5220 server with eight processor
T5120 Server • 4 network slots, up to 2.4 TB internal storage and 4 SSDs cores and 64 execution threads running at
1.4 GHz, 64 GB memory, and one Gigabit
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 1 CPU with 4 or 8 cores, up to 32 threads and 64 GB memory
Ethernet interface. The server ran the Solaris™
T2000 Server • 4 network slots, up to 584 GB internal storage
10 Operating System 8/07 release, the Java™
Development Kit (JDK™ software) version
Sun SPARC Enterprise • 1 CPU with 6 or 8 cores, up to 32 threads and 32 GB memory
1.6.0_12, Standard Edition, and a single
T1000 Server • 4 network slots, up to 292 GB internal stor
instance of the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server
version 2.1.

Several settings were modified to optimize

Performance Advisor
One software component—the Performance
Advisor—helps the Sun GlassFish Enterprise
Server to approach optimal performance with
minimal effort. By describing the deployment
environment using a performance tuning
wizard, the Performance Advisor is able to
configure Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server to
outperform out-of-the-box settings.
To address multiple usage scenarios, Sun
GlassFish Enterprise Server can be configured
using different profiles.
• Developer Profile—optimized for fast
performance. The first set of optimizations are
startup times and low resource utilization
related to the Solaris Operating System. These
• Cluster Profile—optimized for general
optimizations were applied by logging in as
runtime performance and in-memory
the superuser and running the appropriate
session state replication
commands. For example, the following
• Enterprise Profile—optimized for general
settings were used in the /etc/systems file.
runtime performance and the High
Availability Database (HADB) for five 9s
(99.999%) availability set rlim_fd_max=260000
set rlim_fd_cur=260000
set sq_max_size=0
Each profile has default settings tailored to its
set ip:ip_squeue_fanout=1
usage scenario. Because the default settings
focus on providing a positive experience
for evaluation and simple deployments,
they often are not optimal for production
3 Optimizing Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server Performance

In addition, several TCP/IP settings were Once the optimizations are applied, the thresholds are exceeded. The screenshots
tuned. Performance Advisor’s Management Rules in Figure 1 demonstrate how to use the
can be used to create performance alerts. Performance Advisor, including defining
Management Rules monitor key performance the deployment configuration, setting
ndd -set /dev/tcp indicators, and generate alerts when defined parameters, and applying Management Rules.
tcp_conn_req_max_q 30000
ndd -set /dev/tcp
tcp_conn_req_max_q0 30000
ndd -set /dev/tcp
tcp_max_buf 4194304
ndd -set /dev/tcp
tcp_cwnd_max 2097152
ndd -set /dev/tcp
tcp_recv_hiwat 400000
ndd -set /dev/tcp
tcp_xmit_hiwat 400000

Finally, psradm and psrinfo commands

were used to spread network interrupts to all
processor cores on the Sun SPARC Enterprise
T5220 server.

General optimizations that can be applied

to any platform are outlined in the Optimize
GlassFish Performance in a Production
Environment white paper available at
http://www.sun.com/offers/details/
OptimizeGlassFishPerformance.html

Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server optimization

The Tuner wizard component of the
Performance Analyzer was used to optimize
the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server. The
built-in Tuner wizard leverages Sun’s years
of experience optimizing GlassFish software
deployments in customer environments. It
can be used to fine-tune settings any time
the deployment environment or application
behavior changes. Two simple steps are all it
takes to optimize the Sun GlassFish Enterprise
Server. First, provide deployment environment
information to the Tuner wizard, and then
optionally apply recommended settings.

Figure 1. Setting the deployment configuration information, confirming settings, and

configuring Management Rules is easy with the Tuner wizard.
 4 Optimizing Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server Performance

Delivering scalable performance The test using out-of-the-box settings For more information
To test performance, a Web application delivered 891 hits/second, while the test To learn more about Sun GlassFish Enterprise
simulating an e-commerce scenario was using recommended optimizations resulted Server, Sun servers with CoolThreads
deployed. A baseline test was performed in 6,868 hits/second for a 770% (nearly 8x) technology, and how to optimize
using out-of-the-box settings to establish improvement in throughput (Figure 2). deployments, visit sun.com/coolthreads,
standard performance characteristics and sun.com/glassfish, email glassfish@sun.com,
provide a basis for comparison. Next, the A powerful combination or see the references listed in Table 2.
Performance Advisor Tuner wizard was run Today’s Web 2.0 deployments depend
and recommended settings were applied. on high-performance infrastructure to Table 2. References for more information
Since the application was running on a Sun keep pace. The open source Sun GlassFish
Optimize GlassFish Performance in a
SPARC Enterprise T5520 server, the Running software portfolio and related support—Sun
Production Environment
on Sun’s CoolThreads (Niagara) Server GlassFish Enterprise Server, Sun GlassFish
checkbox was selected. Enterprise Service Bus, Sun GlassFish Web sun.com/offers/details/
Server, and Sun GlassFish Web Stack— OptimizeGlassFishPerformance.html
Based on the input provided to the provides the foundation for next-generation
Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1
Tuner wizard, the Performance Advisor Web infrastructure. By running these
Quick Start Guide
recommended settings for improved powerful applications on energy-efficient
performance. These settings were applied by Sun servers with chip multithreading docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-4334
pressing the Confirm button. The tests were technology, and optimizing deployments
Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1
run a second time using these settings. with the Performance Advisor, companies
Administration Guide
can take advantage of outstanding price/
performance and build high-performance docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-4335
Web infrastructure that costs less to run.
Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1
Optimized Deployment Planning Guide
7000
docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-4342
6000 Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1
Performance Tuning Guide
5000
Throughput (Hits/Second)

docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-4343

4000 Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 High

Availability Administration Guide
3000
docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-4341

2000 Sun Java System Application Server 9.1

Installation Guide
Standard
1000 docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-3670

Sun Servers with CoolThreads Technology

0
sun.com/coolthreads
Figure 2. Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server can be optimized for Sun servers wth chip
multithreading technology to deliver outstanding performance.

1. See http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/results/ for the latest benchmark results.

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© 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, CoolThreads, GlassFish, Java, JDK, MySQL, Solaris, and Sun Fire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc., or its
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trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. Information subject to change without notice. SunWIN #561762 04/09