Process Monitoring

Spring Boot Actuator provides several features for monitoring the application process, including process information, thread dumps, and heap dumps.

Process Information

The info endpoint can provide process-specific information:

@Component
public class ProcessInfoContributor implements InfoContributor {

    @Override
    public void contribute(Info.Builder builder) {
        RuntimeMXBean runtime = ManagementFactory.getRuntimeMXBean();
        
        builder.withDetail("process", Map.of(
            "pid", ProcessHandle.current().pid(),
            "uptime", Duration.ofMillis(runtime.getUptime()),
            "start-time", Instant.ofEpochMilli(runtime.getStartTime()),
            "jvm-name", runtime.getVmName(),
            "jvm-version", runtime.getVmVersion()
        ));
    }
}

Thread Monitoring

Thread Dump Endpoint

Access thread dumps via:

GET /actuator/threaddump

Custom Thread Monitoring

@Component
@ManagedResource(objectName = "com.example:type=ThreadMonitor")
public class ThreadMonitorMBean {

    @ManagedAttribute
    public int getActiveThreadCount() {
        return Thread.activeCount();
    }

    @ManagedAttribute
    public long getTotalStartedThreadCount() {
        return ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean().getTotalStartedThreadCount();
    }

    @ManagedOperation
    public String getThreadDump() {
        ThreadMXBean threadBean = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();
        ThreadInfo[] threadInfos = threadBean.dumpAllThreads(true, true);
        
        StringBuilder dump = new StringBuilder();
        for (ThreadInfo threadInfo : threadInfos) {
            dump.append(threadInfo.toString()).append("\n");
        }
        return dump.toString();
    }
}

Memory Monitoring

Heap Dump Endpoint

Access heap dumps via:

GET /actuator/heapdump

Memory Metrics

@Component
public class MemoryMetrics {

    private final MeterRegistry meterRegistry;

    public MemoryMetrics(MeterRegistry meterRegistry) {
        this.meterRegistry = meterRegistry;
        
        Gauge.builder("memory.heap.usage")
            .description("Heap memory usage percentage")
            .register(meterRegistry, this, MemoryMetrics::getHeapUsagePercentage);
    }

    private double getHeapUsagePercentage() {
        MemoryMXBean memoryBean = ManagementFactory.getMemoryMXBean();
        MemoryUsage heapUsage = memoryBean.getHeapMemoryUsage();
        return (double) heapUsage.getUsed() / heapUsage.getMax() * 100;
    }
}

Process Health Monitoring

@Component
public class ProcessHealthIndicator implements HealthIndicator {

    @Override
    public Health health() {
        try {
            // Check process health
            long pid = ProcessHandle.current().pid();
            ProcessHandle process = ProcessHandle.of(pid).orElseThrow();
            
            if (process.isAlive()) {
                return Health.up()
                    .withDetail("pid", pid)
                    .withDetail("cpu-time", process.info().totalCpuDuration())
                    .withDetail("start-time", process.info().startInstant())
                    .build();
            } else {
                return Health.down()
                    .withDetail("reason", "Process not alive")
                    .build();
            }
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            return Health.down(ex).build();
        }
    }
}

Best Practices

Security: Secure heap dump and thread dump endpoints in production
Performance: Monitor the performance impact of process monitoring
Storage: Be aware that heap dumps can be very large files
Automation: Set up automated collection of thread dumps during incidents
Analysis: Use appropriate tools for analyzing heap and thread dumps

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