For every client I work with, I always keep a copy of the SMP folder if I can. And every time I need a standard demo instance with the same configuration as the client, I simply deploy it on my local Websphere and Oracle DB.

My current Websphere version is 8.5.5.3, and I had problems whenever I deploy a Maximo 7.6 instance with lots of add-ons. I gave up the attempt the last few times as I didn’t really need it.

Recently, as I was working with Maximo Flex (on the cloud), having a local instance is necessary as Maximo on the cloud has lots of limitations in terms of what you can do. As such, when I had the same problem deploying Maximo, I had to investigate and fix the issue.

OutOfMemory when deploying big Maximo.ear file to Websphere

Turned out it is an OutOfMemory issue during the deployment process and it took me quite a bit of time to fix it, so I leave the note here as I’m sure many others will have similar problems.

  • PROBLEM: when deploying Maximo 7.6 with many add-ons, Websphere keeps running or stops with a failure.
  • TROUBLESHOOT: if it takes more than 1 hour, I restart the system and re-deploy Maximo. In many cases, it immediately returns a failure. If it returns a failure, I look at the SystemOut.log file under 
[Websphere Home]/AppServer/profiles/ctgDmgr01/logs/dmgr/
  • SOLUTION: if the problem is an OutOfMemory error, it can be tricky as there are many different processes in Websphere using Java. I ended up employing the spray and pray approach:
    • Increase heap size for WAS Admin console to 2GB: edit the wsadmin.bat under [Websphere Home]/AppServer/bin to update this parameter: PERFJAVAOPTION=-Xms512m -Xmx1024m –Xquickstart
    • Increase Application Server heap size: in Websphere admin console, go to Servers section (on the left side menu) -> Server Types -> Websphere Applicaton Servers -> [MXServer] -> Java Process Management (link on the right side menu) -> Process Definition -> Java Virtual Machine. Set both Initial and Maximum heap size to 2048 MB
    • Increase deployment manager heap size: in Websphere admin console, go to System Administration section (on the left side menu) -> Deployment manager -> Java and Process management -> Process definition -> Java Virtual Machine. Set both initial and maximum heap size to 2048 MB
    • Increase heap for deploy tool: edit the ejbdeploy.bat file under [Websphere Home]/AppServer/deploy/tool/itp to update this parameter: EJBDEPLOY_JVM_HEAP=-Xms512  -Xmx1024m

With these updates, I managed to deploy the EAR file. But Maximo and Websphere alone consume 6GB of my laptop memory. I had to remind myself to reduce them back to probably 1024MB each to save valuable real estate.