TL;DR: Different apps need different GCs. Start with G1, go ZGC/Shenandoah for ultra-low pauses, use Parallel for throughput, Serial for tiny heaps, and Epsilon for benchmarks. ⚖️
Why care?
⚡ Latency-sensitive APIs? Try ZGC (and Shenandoah if your distro ships it).
🚀 Batch/ETL? Parallel GC often wins on throughput.
🧩 Small container / single core? Serial GC is fine.
🧪 Baseline perf? Epsilon = alloc-only, zero GC.
🧠 Modern defaults: G1 balances pause time & throughput. Generational modes for ZGC/Shenandoah are now mainstream.
Pro tips:
📈 Measure before tuning: -Xlog:gc*, watch P95/P99 pauses & old-gen growth.
🧰 Start with defaults, then adjust pause targets (G1) or heap size (ZGC).
Curious which GC fits your workload? I summarized the what/when/why in the full post—check it out and share your context (heap size, SLA, traffic)! 👇
#Java #JVM #GarbageCollection #G1 #ZGC #Shenandoah #Performance #LowLatency #Throughput #Java25 #DevOps
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