Method for finding memory leak in large Java heap dumps

Question

I have to find a memory leak in a Java application. I have some experience with this but would like advice on a methodology/strategy for this. Any reference and advice is we

Answer 1

If it's happening after a week's usage, and your application is as byzantine as you describe, perhaps you're better off restarting it every week ?

I know it's not fixing the problem, but it may be a time-effective solution. Are there time windows when you can have outages ? Can you load balance and fail over one instance whilst keeping the second up ? Perhaps you can trigger a restart when memory consumption breaches a certain limit (perhaps monitoring via JMX or similar).