apache-commons-dbcp connection pooling - works in dev, not in further environments

Question

I have a Struts2 WebApp using Spring with apache-commons-dbcp. While running in my local development environment, the application opens no more than 8 connections, which is the default value for maxActive.

However, once the WAR is moved to a test server - running the same version of Tomcat (6.0.35) as my development box - the application open far more connections. After a couple minutes I can have around 40 connections open, while the same test in development only results in 8 connections.

This appears to be a configuration issue between the two environments, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Any advice?

Answer 1

Turns out that my local instance of Tomcat was setting this Java option:

-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC

The test and production servers were not. Enabling it resolved the issue.