Memory thrash is caused when a large number of temporary objects are created in very short intervals. Although these objects are temporary and are eventually cleaned up, the garbage collection mechanism might struggle to keep up with the rate of object creation. This might cause application performance problems. Monitoring the time spent in garbage collection can provide insight into performance issues, including memory thrash. For example, an increase in the number of spikes for major collections affects the JVM's ability to serve Business Transaction traffic and might indicate potential memory thrash.

The Tiers & Nodes > Memory > Object Instance Tracking subtab helps you isolate the root cause of possible memory thrash. To troubleshoot memory thrash, see Java Memory Thrash.