Splunk Completes Acquisition of Plumbr Learn more

Last, but not least, is AProf by Devexperts. AProf is a memory allocation profiler packaged as a Java agent.

To run your application with AProf, you need to modify the startup scripts of the JVM similarly to the following example:

java -javaagent:/path-to/aprof.jar com.yourcompany.YourApplication

Now, after restarting the application, an aprof.txt file will be created to the working directory. The file is updated once every minute and contains information similar to the following:

========================================================================================================================
TOTAL allocation dump for 91,289 ms (0h01m31s)
Allocated 1,769,670,584 bytes in 24,868,088 objects of 425 classes in 2,127 locations
========================================================================================================================

Top allocation-inducing locations with the data types allocated from them
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eu.plumbr.demo.largeheap.ManyTargetsGarbageProducer.newRandomClassObject: 1,423,675,776 (80.44%) bytes in 17,113,721 (68.81%) objects (avg size 83 bytes)
	int[]: 711,322,976 (40.19%) bytes in 1,709,911 (6.87%) objects (avg size 416 bytes)
	char[]: 369,550,816 (20.88%) bytes in 5,132,759 (20.63%) objects (avg size 72 bytes)
	java.lang.reflect.Constructor: 136,800,000 (7.73%) bytes in 1,710,000 (6.87%) objects (avg size 80 bytes)
	java.lang.Object[]: 41,079,872 (2.32%) bytes in 1,710,712 (6.87%) objects (avg size 24 bytes)
	java.lang.String: 41,063,496 (2.32%) bytes in 1,710,979 (6.88%) objects (avg size 24 bytes)
	java.util.ArrayList: 41,050,680 (2.31%) bytes in 1,710,445 (6.87%) objects (avg size 24 bytes)
          ... cut for brevity ... 

In the output above allocations are ordered by size. From the above you can see right away that 80.44% of the bytes and 68.81% of the objects were allocated in the ManyTargetsGarbageProducer.newRandomClassObject() method. Out of these, int[] arrays took the most space with 40.19% of total memory consumption.

Scrolling further down the file, you will discover a block with allocation traces, also ordered by allocation sizes:

Top allocated data types with reverse location traces
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
int[]: 725,306,304 (40.98%) bytes in 1,954,234 (7.85%) objects (avg size 371 bytes)
	eu.plumbr.demo.largeheap.ClonableClass0006.: 38,357,696 (2.16%) bytes in 92,206 (0.37%) objects (avg size 416 bytes)
		java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance: 38,357,696 (2.16%) bytes in 92,206 (0.37%) objects (avg size 416 bytes)
			eu.plumbr.demo.largeheap.ManyTargetsGarbageProducer.newRandomClassObject: 38,357,280 (2.16%) bytes in 92,205 (0.37%) objects (avg size 416 bytes)
			java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance: 416 (0.00%) bytes in 1 (0.00%) objects (avg size 416 bytes)
... cut for brevity ... 

From the above we can see the allocations for int[] arrays, again zooming in to the ClonableClass0006 constructor where these arrays were created.

So, like other solutions, AProf exposed information about allocation size and locations, making it possible to zoom in to the most memory-hungry parts of your application. However, in our opinion AProf is the most useful allocation profiler, as it focuses on just one thing and does it extremely well. In addition, this open-source tool is free and has the least overhead compared to alternatives.