Reason

64bit operating systems allocate more virtual memory to processes that use JVMs (Java Virtual Machines). In our case, the Netprobe might be running a JMX plugin.

Additional information

This is NOT AN ISSUE and there is nothing to worry about. From the online article, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/561245/virtual-memory-usage-from-java-under-linux-too-much-memory-used:

When is Virtual Memory Size Important?

The virtual memory map contains a lot of stuff. Some of it is read-only, some of it is shared, and some of it is allocated but never touched (eg, almost all of the 4Gb of heap in this example). But the operating system is smart enough to only load what it needs, so the virtual memory size is largely irrelevant.

Where virtual memory size is important is if you're running on a 32-bit operating system, where you can only allocate 2Gb (or, in some cases, 3Gb) of process address space. In that case you're dealing with a scarce resource, and might have to make tradeoffs, such as reducing your heap size in order to memory-map a large file or create lots of threads.

But, given that 64-bit machines are ubiquitous, I don't think it will be long before Virtual Memory Size is a completely irrelevant statistic.

When is Resident Set Size Important?

Resident Set size is that portion of the virtual memory space that is actually in RAM. If your RSS grows to be a significant portion of your total physical memory, it might be time to start worrying. If your RSS grows to take up all your physical memory, and your system starts swapping, it's well past time to start worrying.

But RSS is also misleading, especially on a lightly loaded machine. The operating system doesn't expend a lot of effort to reclaiming the pages used by a process. There's little benefit to be gained by doing so, and the potential for an expensive page fault if the process touches the page in the future. As a result, the RSS statistic may include lots of pages that aren't in active use.

Bottom Line

Unless you're swapping, don't get overly concerned about what the various memory statistics are telling you. With the caveat that an ever-growing RSS may indicate some sort of memory leak.

With a Java program, it's far more important to pay attention to what's happening in the heap. The total amount of space consumed is important, and there are some steps that you can take to reduce that. More important is the amount of time that you spend in garbage collection, and which parts of the heap are getting collected.

Accessing the disk (ie, a database) is expensive, and memory is cheap. If you can trade one for the other, do so.