If you want to learn a thing or two about WebSphere Portal, Sal Pece is one of the people you want to talk to. If you want to learn about WebSphere Portal Server 7, Sal Pece is just about the only person you can talk to. WebSphere Portal Server 7 won't go GA for another few months, but that hasn't stopped Sal from hacking around with the Beta version, and figuring out how things work in this new edition of IBM's flagship middleware product.

This time, we're talking about performance, primarily setting the Java Heap Size and the Garbage Collection algorithm to optimize performance, and at the very least, speed things up when you've got to bounce that Portal Server.

WebSphere Portal 7 Performance Tips: Changing the Heap Size & Verbose Garbage Collection

Other Articles by WebSphere Portal Expert Sal Pece:
Evaluating WebSphere Portal Server 7
Speeding Up Your WebSphere Portal Server 6.1 and 7 Installations

Turning off verbose garbage collection might help a tiny amount in the speed of startup and service, but the percentage is tiny ( < 1% )

The benefits of having verbose garbage collection turned on vastly out-weigh the costs, in my experience and opinion.

So, a 1% saving in Portal startup time. That shaves about ten minutes off the startup time, doesn't it?

Your point is well made. I have seen some significant changes by manipulating the heap though.

I didn't realize that increasing the heap size and playing with verbose garbage collection can represent a tip. Who on earth is not increasing the heap size when dealing with WPS ?

Let's try to remember that turning off logging on ANY product will increase performance (or setting the log to /dev/null). Tweaking the thread startup pool, or turning off unnecessary services, that MAY represent a tip.