Monthly Archives: May 2017

Running a JVM in a Container Without Getting Killed

Posted on by Carlos Sanchez
24

No pun intended

The JDK 8u131 has backported a nice feature in JDK 9, which is the ability of the JVM to detect how much memory is available when running inside a Docker container.

I have talked multiple times about the problems running a JVM inside a container, how it will default in most cases to a max heap of 1/4 of the host memory, not the container.

For example in my machine

$ docker run -m 100MB openjdk:8u121 java -XshowSettings:vm -version
VM settings:
    Max. Heap Size (Estimated): 444.50M
    Ergonomics Machine Class: server
    Using VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Wait, WAT? I set a container memory of 100MB and my JVM sets a max heap of 444M ? It is very likely that it is going to cause the Kernel to kill my JVM at some point.

Let’s try the JDK 8u131 with the experimental option -XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap

$ docker run -m 100MB openjdk:8u131 java \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions \
  -XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap \
  -XshowSettings:vm -version
VM settings:
    Max. Heap Size (Estimated): 44.50M
    Ergonomics Machine Class: server
    Using VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Ok this makes more sense, the JVM was able to detect the container has only 100MB and set the max heap to 44M.

Let’s try in a bigger container

$ docker run -m 1GB openjdk:8u131 java \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions \
  -XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap \
  -XshowSettings:vm -version
VM settings:
    Max. Heap Size (Estimated): 228.00M
    Ergonomics Machine Class: server
    Using VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Mmm, now the container has 1GB but JVM is only using 228M as max heap. Can we optimize this even more, given that nothing else other than the JVM is running in the container? Yes we can!

$ docker run -m 1GB openjdk:8u131 java \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions \
  -XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap \
  -XX:MaxRAMFraction=1 -XshowSettings:vm -version
VM settings:
    Max. Heap Size (Estimated): 910.50M
    Ergonomics Machine Class: server
    Using VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM

Using -XX:MaxRAMFraction we are telling the JVM to use available memory/MaxRAMFraction as max heap. Using -XX:MaxRAMFraction=1 we are using almost all the available memory as max heap.

UPDATE: follow up for Java 10+ at Running a JVM in a Container Without Getting Killed II

Docker Registry with Let’s Encrypt Certificate

Posted on by Carlos Sanchez
1

A one-liner to run a SSL Docker registry generating a Let’s Encrypt certificate.

This command will create a registry proxying the Docker hub, caching the images in a registry volume.

LetsEncrypt certificate will be auto generated and stored in the host dir as letsencrypt.json. You could also use a Docker volume to store it.

In order for the certificate generation to work the registry needs to be accessible from the internet in port 443. After the certificate is generated that’s no longer needed.

docker run -d -p 443:5000 --name registry \
  -v `pwd`:/etc/docker/registry/ \
  -v registry:/var/lib/registry \
  -e REGISTRY_HTTP_ADDR=0.0.0.0:5000 \
  -e REGISTRY_HTTP_HOST=https://docker.example.com \
  -e REGISTRY_HTTP_TLS_LETSENCRYPT_CACHEFILE=/etc/docker/registry/letsencrypt.json \
  -e REGISTRY_HTTP_TLS_LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com \
  -e REGISTRY_PROXY_REMOTEURL=https://registry-1.docker.io \
  registry:2

You can also create a config.yml in this dir and run the registry using the file instead of environment variables

version: 0.1
storage:
  filesystem:
http:
  addr: 0.0.0.0:5000
  host: https://docker.example.com
  tls:
    letsencrypt:
      cachefile: /etc/docker/registry/letsencrypt.json
      email: admin@example.com
proxy:
  remoteurl: https://registry-1.docker.io

Then run

docker run -d -p 443:5000 --name registry \
  -v `pwd`:/etc/docker/registry/ \
  -v registry:/var/lib/registry \
  registry:2

If you want to use this as a remote repository and not just for proxying, remove the proxy entry in the configuration