I have monitored the memory using system tools, jboss web console and jprofiler... all gave the same result.. following is snapshot of jboss web-console main screen showing the resouce utilization JVM Environment Free Memory: 981 MB Max Memory: 1333 MB Total Memory: 1058 MB #Threads: 78 JVM Version: 1.5.0_07-b03 (Sun Microsystems Inc.) JVM Name: Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM In the run.cfg I configured the startup memory to 128m and the max to 1.5g... jboss start with 128m and kept eating more memory (although that there were always free memory avaialble --- monitoring the free memory figure of the web-console)..... till it reached this state of consuming 1058mb... my understanding Jboss/JVM should not ask the OS for more memory if there is free memory available (cleaned by garbage collector)... with time the total memory reaches the max memory and the jboss starts throwing OOME. so the question again, what can I do to make the JVM/JBoss uses the free memory instead of consuming new memory from the OS. Regards, Bakry View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4145321#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...