'All threads (150) are currently busy, waiting. Increase maxThreads (150) or check the servlet status' Due to High Volume Transactions

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Symptoms

On Confluence instances with many concurrent users, the following error may appear in the catalina.out log file:

1 SEVERE: All threads (150) are currently busy, waiting. Increase maxThreads (150) or check the servlet status

Cause

A large number of concurrent users are using all of the available threads.

Resolution

Note that this may be the sign of a poorly performing system with hung threads. Check Common causes for Jira Server crashes and performance issues for a root cause diagnosis. 

If you're running a high-load installation of Confluence, increase the number of maxThreads in your server.xml file:

From 150:

1 2 3 4 <Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" URIEncoding="UTF-8"/>

To 200 or greater:

1 2 3 4 <Connector port="8080" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" maxThreads="200" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" URIEncoding="UTF-8"/>

The higher you increase the maxThreads, the more resources your Confluence instance will consume.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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