About the Cover

The drawing on the cover of this book shows a snapshot in time of the sport of team penning. In team penning, an arena contains 15 to 30 cows with numbers on their backs. There are three cows assigned to each number. Three riders have up to 1-1/2 minutes to isolate the three cows with their assigned number (and only those cows) from the herd and put them through a gate into a small pen. The fastest time, usually less than 30 seconds, wins a cash prize. Team penning is a fun and exciting sport for horsemen of all ages and skill levels. This is true mostly because the cows are the great equalizers between the professionals and the amateurs. The cows are not cooperative in this sport. The cows do not want to leave their friends or go into that little pen where there is no food. After a few events, the cows are not afraid of the horses and actually don't mind going right under your horse's nose or belly to avoid the pen. Even the more cooperative cows are slow about it and don't help you win the money. In fact, it seems that the more highly skilled the horse and rider , the less inclined the more determined the cows are not to go into the pen. Beginner's luck reigns supreme and often cows happily trot into the pen in front of an 8-year-old on a stubborn pony. And of course, we can't leave out the horse, who has a mind of its own as well, chasing with us one minute and standing over us (while we lay on the ground) the next . Herding cows under a time deadline is a lot like herding cats.

There are many analogies between chasing unruly cows and managing IT infrastructures . No matter how skilled you are at managing your applications and infrastructure, something will go wrong to keep you from reaching your system availability targets. Application developers hand you uncooperative applications to manage. Your management systems, which are supposed to help you wrestle the applications into a highly available, high performing work of beauty, are often as much trouble as the applications you are trying to manage. And so, on the cover of a technical programming book, is a picture of team penners, the brave and skillful cowboy, er, IT administrator, riding his trusty horse, I mean, using his management systems, to efficiently move cows, um, applications, into the pen, rather, managed environment, where they will all be well behaved and controllable. And what does JMX have to do with this? We hope that this book and JMX will help you make your horse behave, your cows cooperative, and your penning time faster. Oh wait, we mean your management systems more efficient, your applications more easily managed and your IT infrastructure more stable.

(Heather Kreger is an avid amateur team penner, Ward Harold was raised on a ranch in Kansas and appreciated the analogy having chased many cows from horseback as well. Leigh Williamson doesn't chase cows, but believed Heather and Ward's analogy.)