Chapter 3. All about MBeans

MBeans are the raw material of JMX-based management. Management systems monitor and control resources: a router, a server, an EJB, or a JVM. To perform their monitoring and control duties , management systems need information about the resources they are responsible for and a means of affecting the operation of those resources. In JMX, MBeans provide the information about, and operations on, resources that management systems require.

The instrumentation layer of the JMX architecture is all about MBeans: standard MBeans, dynamic MBeans, open MBeans, and model MBeans. This chapter describes standard and dynamic MBeans in detail and gives an overview of the principles and interfaces of open MBeans. Model MBeans are the topic of Chapter 4. Here we define what MBeans are, discuss the various aspects of their design, and describe their implementation. Throughout we pay special attention to the management interface that MBeans expose to the rest of the management system.