Install Memory Analyzer

IBM Memory Analyzer can be installed in IBM Support Assistant (ISA) or Eclipse.

What does Memory Analyzer do?

IBM Memory Analyzer is a tool that is used to analyze a heap dump. Often, Memory Analyzer is used to spot a memory leak. It may be noteworhthy that IBM Memory Analyzer is based off of Eclipse Memory Analyzer (MAT), thus you may want to consider using Eclipse Memory Analyzer as well.

Using Memory Analyzer

To analyze a heap dump, in IBM Memory Analyzer, select File > Open Heap Dump and select a heap dump file.

• Be aware that if the dump file is very large, it could take a very long time for Memory Analyzer to load the dump file, or Memory Analyze may hang indefinately when attempting to load the dump file.
• Be aware that a number of files will be created in the same directory as the heapdump file being analyzed. The files will start with the text "heapdump". The files can be deleted after the heap dump has been analyzed.

After the dump has been parsed, you will be prompted to select a common report. Leak Suspects Report is a good first report to select.

A pie chart will be displayed. In this example, the majority of the heap has been identified as Problem Suspect. This is a good example of a heap dump that has some problem.

Scrolling down, the problem suspect's will be detailed. In this example, java.lang.Class is using 61% of the heap. This lets you know that you would want to focus your attention on the java.lang.Class as part of your problem determination effort.