Chapter 1. Overview of Cryostat

Cryostat is a container-native Java application based on JDK Flight Recorder (JFR) that you can use to monitor Java Virtual Machine (JVM) performance for containerized workloads that run on a Red Hat OpenShift cluster.

You can deploy Cryostat in a container in a Red Hat OpenShift project that hosts your containerized Java applications. You can create JVM targets that correspond to the JVM instances that you use to run your containerized workload. You can connect Cryostat to the JVM targets to record and analyze data about heap and non-heap memory usage, thread count, garbage collection, and other performance metrics for each JVM target.

You can use the tools that are included with Cryostat to monitor the performance of your JVMs in real time, capture JDK Flight Recorder (JFR) recordings and snapshots, generate Automated Analysis reports, and visualize your recorded performance data by using a Grafana dashboard.

The Cryostat web console and HTTP API provides a way to analyze your JVM performance data inside the container without having to rely on an external monitoring application. However, you can also export your recordings from Cryostat into an external instance of JDK Mission Control (JMC) when you need to perform a deeper analysis of your data outside of a cluster environment.

Cryostat supports role-based access control (RBAC) as a standard feature of OpenShift Container Platform. You can configure different levels of authorization for each user role to ensure the privacy and integrity of your Flight Recording data.

You can install Cryostat inside a Red Hat OpenShift project by using Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM).

You can also download the latest Cryostat component images from the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. The following container images exist for Cryostat 2.4 on the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog: