users@glassfish.java.net

system-level CPU consumption on Linux RedHat

From: <glassfish_at_javadesktop.org>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:27:42 PDT

Hello,

while doing performance tests on a clustered glassfish configuration, I noticed that the CPU consumption, although reasonable (50%), is oddly spread between user and system time: indeed, the sar command indicates 40% of "system" CPU consumption (from the man page: "Percentage of CPU utilization that occurred while executing at the system level (kernel)"), and only 10% of "user" CPU.

I am surprised that the machine spends so much time doing kernel tasks: there is no swap (as per the vmstat command), but the application handles a number of socket operations (WebService calls that end up hitting a DB).
As per my understanding, this "system" CPU deals with swapping, socket and file opening/closing, context switching,... Are there other activities, and how could I monitor them?

More to the point of this forum (glassfish): is it a known fact that a JVM running Glassfish consumes a lot of "system" CPU?

Thanks in advance.
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