JMX Management and Monitoring

Java Platform Standard Edition (JSE) 5.0 provides built-in remote monitoring, management, and a console to monitor applications that run using JSE 5.0 or later versions. These tools can be used to view the resource utilization of Java applications. For example, this can help with detecting memory issues, class loading and garbage collection, controlling JDK logging levels, and managing an application's Managed Beans (MBeans).

I decided to monitor Tomcat with Time Expression deployed in it. First, I had to set the CATALINA_OPTS environment variable as follows:

set CATALINA_OPTS=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote

After setting this environment variable, I started Tomcat from the command line. We could just as easily do this with Tomcat, within Eclipse. After starting Tomcat, I launched the JConsole utility provided with the JDK, as follows:

c:\program files\java\jdk1.5.0_06\bin\jconsole

Figures 9.8 and 9.9 show monitoring of a local instance of Tomcat using JConsole. For details on JMX-based management and monitoring, refer to the java.sun.com website.

Figure 9.8. JSE 5.0's JConsole application (monitoring local Apache Tomcat and timex.war).

Figure 9.9. JSE 5.0's JConsole application (monitoring local Apache Tomcat).

In the next chapter, we will develop our own JMX bean (with the help of the Spring Framework) and monitor it using the JConsole application.