Profiling the JVM is an essential task to make sure the virtual machine is performing well and also to check the health of your application server.
Before we start profiling our applications it's a prerequisite that you have installed Java Virtual Machine v.1.6 on your computer: if you already have got one working you can safely skip the following section and move to the Installing VisualVM section.
In order to install Java, let's move to the Oracle/Sun download page:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
Choose to download the latest JDK/JRE, which is, at the time of writing, the JDK 1.6 update 20. Once the download is complete, run the executable file to start the installation.
jdk-6u20-windows-i586.exe # Windows sh jdk-6u20-linux-i586.bin # Linux
You can accept all the defaults given to you by the set up wizard. When the installation is completed, we need to update a couple of settings on the computer...