diff --git a/dspace/bin/dspace b/dspace/bin/dspace
index 7d5d678d0f6e..265b7d60f653 100644
--- a/dspace/bin/dspace
+++ b/dspace/bin/dspace
@@ -36,7 +36,8 @@ fi
 #Allow user to specify java options through JAVA_OPTS variable
 if [ "$JAVA_OPTS" = "" ]; then
   #Default Java to use 256MB of memory
-  JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx256m -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8"
+  #JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx256m -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8"
+  JAVA_OPTS="-Xmx4096m -Xms2048m -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8"
 fi
 
 # Now invoke Java