Getting JVM heap size, used memory, total memory using Java Runtime

Getting JVM heap size, used memory, total memory using Java Runtime.

Reading runtime java virtual memory usage is useful when the system/application is struggling in getting resources. System Memory is one of the main resource that an application developer has to consider while managing the application.

Java’s Runtime class provide lot of information about the resource details of Java Virtual Machine or JVM. The memory consumed by the JVM can be read by different methods in Runtime class. Following is the  example of reading JVM Heap Size, Total Memory and used memory using Java Runtime api.

 public class MemoryUtilization {  
   public static void main(String [] args) {  
     int conversion = 1024*1024;       
     Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();       
     System.out.println("##### Heap utilization #####");       
     System.out.println("Used Memory:" + (runtime.totalMemory() - runtime.freeMemory()) / conversion);  
     System.out.println("Free Memory:" + runtime.freeMemory() / conversion);  
     System.out.println("Total Memory:" + runtime.totalMemory() / conversion);       
     System.out.println("Max Memory:" + runtime.maxMemory() /conversion);  
   }  
 }  

JVM parameters in Java

On the basis of how we specify JVM option it can be divided into two parts, JVM Options which starts with –X and those which starts with -XX:

1) JVM Options that begin with -X are non-standard (thy are not guaranteed to be supported on all JVM implementations), and are subject to change without notice in subsequent releases of the JDK.

2) JVM Options or parameters which are specified with -XX are not stable and are not recommended for casual use. These options are subject to change without notice also.


Key Points about JVM Options:

1) Boolean JVM options can be turned on with -XX:+ and can be turned off with -XX:-.
2) Numeric JVM Options can be set with -XX:=. Numbers can include 'm' or 'M' for megabytes, 'k' or 'K' for kilobytes, and 'g' or 'G' for gigabytes (for example, 32k is the same as 32768).
3) String JVM options can be set by using -XX:=, and usually used to specify a file, a path, or a list of commands.

The command java -help lists the standard options (standard across different JVM implementations) for the Java application launcher. The command java -X can be used to see the Java application launcher's non-standard (X for extension specific to that JVM) arguments.The -X options are non-standard and subject to change without notice. If you wish to detect which JVM arguments your currently running Java application is using, you can try below code.

Read JVM Parameters Runtime

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;

import java.lang.management.RuntimeMXBean;

import java.util.List;

public void runtimeParameters() {

          RuntimeMXBean bean = ManagementFactory.getRuntimeMXBean();

          List<String> aList = bean.getInputArguments();

          for (int i = 0; i < aList.size(); i++) {

                    System.out.println( aList.get( i ) );

          }

}