Reducing WebSphere Application Server I/O overhead

Best practices for reducing I/O overhead of WebSphere Application Server:

If you applications on WAS are I/O intensive i.e do a lot of logging then following the best practices below will help reduce the stress on the OS I/O sub-system. If you run into issues with incomplete logging or with truncated javacores then reducing the amount of information logged to the system may help reduce the severity of the problem.

1. Disable the WebSphere Application Server service log/activity log
The service log is more commonly known as the activity.log and is found in the /profiles//logs directory. There is only one activity.log for each node. WebSphere Application Server runtime events are logged to the activity.log. It is written in binary format, so it cannot be viewed in a text editor.

The main purpose of the activity.log is that it can be viewed with the Log Analyzer tool, is a graphical user interface that displays the events from the activity.log and uses a symptom database to analyze the events and diagnose problems. This service is not essential to WAS and very few system administrator make use of the activity / service log.

You can configure properties of the activity.log in the administrative console: 
1. Select Troubleshooting → Logs and Trace. 
2. Select the WebSphere Application Server process. 
3. Select IBM® Service Logs. Disable the activity.log.