Jboss directory "data" deletion issue

[sreekanth.munarai]

Hi All,

Recently, we have observed in Production environment that our application server(Jboss 7.1.1AS) using high CPU utilization and remained constant above 90%. After analyzing we have observed that JMS services from root folder 'data' are using this max CPU. Threads were stuck/constantly using resources high CPU usage. We have restarted the application server deleting 'data' folder from directory. Issue been resolved, CPU fallen drastically down, application was running smooth.

My main concern is, is it recommended to delete/remove 'data' folder before every restart of the server?? Would it have any effect on performance?? However, folder gets created automatically as log and tmp files. But before making it as practice to delete 'data' file regularly, want to confirm is it OK to delete the same on regular basis of server restarts. Please advise.

Thanks,

Sreekanth

[jbertram]

My main concern is, is it recommended to delete/remove 'data' folder before every restart of the server??

I can only speak from a JMS perspective...

It's not recommended generally speaking.  Whether or not it makes sense really depends on your use-case.

Durable JMS messages are stored in the 'data' directory by default so if you remove it then you'll loose all that data.  For many use-cases losing durable JMS messages is disastrous, but for others it doesn't really matter.  You'll have to decide for yourself which use-case you have.  If you don't ultimately care about durable JMS messages then it's a good idea to ensure that none of your clients are sending durable JMS messages because any durable JMS message will be written to disk which has significant performance implications.  If it's not feasible to inspect every client you can simply disable message persistence to disk on the broker itself via configuration.

Couple of other points:

1. I believe other critical data (e.g. transactions logs) are stored in the 'data' directory by default that you may not want to lose, but as before this will be determined by your use-case (e.g. are you using XA transactions at all?).
2. JBoss AS 7.1.1.Final is quite old at this point so I recommend you upgrade ASAP.  It was released over 4 years ago now.  The situation you encountered with high CPU is likely due to a bug (although I'm not 100% certain of that because I don't have enough details about it).

[sreekanth.munarai]

Yes Justin, I completely agree with you. I have deleted data folder to resolve issue at that particular time. As data maintains all the transnational/jms/ things, so deleting the same would definitely impact on performance and even confirmed the same from Development team. Thanks for your valuable advises Justin.