Java process memory usage keeps increasing infinitely

Question

Preconditions:

• PC with 16 Gb of RAM
• JDK 1.8.x installed on Ubuntu 16.10 x64.
• a standard Spring-based web application, that is deployed on Tomcat

Answer 1

My hypothesis is that you collect allocation info / call stacks / etc in JProfiler and the RSS growth you observe is related to JProfiler keeping that data in memory.

You can verify if that's true by collecting less info (there should be a screen at the start of the profiling allowing you to e.g. not collect object allocations) and see if you observe smaller RSS growth as a result. Running your load test without JProfiler is also an option.

I had a similar case in the past.