ParallelGCThreads default value is not correct in OpenShift

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • OpenJDK 8, OpenJDK 11, OpenJDK 17
  • Red hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)
    • 4.x

Issue

Usage of Parallel GC for an java container returns different ParallelGCThreads than VM usage.

Resolution

Given a container aware JDK, like OpenJDK 8u191+, the JVM detects the cpus and memory settings at start-up from the cgroups values - meaning from the CPU resource limits.
In some specific cases, when the default number of threads is not adequate, the user can specific a fixed number for ParallelGCThreads for the Java application in the container/pod on the deployment/deployment container by overwriting ParallelGCThreads/Concurrent JVM via JVM flag. However, this value should be calculated according to workload and tested against the default values.

Root Cause

As explained on the solution Should -XX:+UseContainerSupport flag be used in OpenJDK images?, recent versions of the JDK are container aware and it will deduce the number of CPUs running from the cgroups.
ParallelGCThreads are calculated based on the JDK algorithm (so gc specific) and calculated from the number of cpus used on the settings - for OCP deployed via deployment/deploymentconfig, the number of cpus are set via limit/requests.
From the cpus the calculation is according to the gc collector. For calculation of ParallelGCThreads see Tuning ParallelGCThreads / ConcGCThreads in CMS on OpenJDK and How G1GC calculates the default value for ConcGCThreads and ParallelGCThreads.

GC collector ParallelGCThreads/Concurrent threads calculation
CMS ParallelGCThreads calculation
G1GC ConcGCThreads and ParallelGCThreads calculation
Shenandoah ConcGCThreads and ParallelGCThreads calculation

Diagnostic Steps

# java -version | grep GCThreads
Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal
    uintx ConcGCThreads                             = 0                                   {product}
    uintx HeapSizePerGCThread                       = 87241520                            {product}
    uintx ParallelGCThreads                         = 4                                   {product}
     bool TraceDynamicGCThreads                     = false                               {product}
     bool UseDynamicNumberOfGCThreads               = false                               {product}
openjdk version "1.8.0_232"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_232-b09)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.232-b09, mixed mode)

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