Is there a performance impact when using SNMP monitoring in Java?

Question

I am using the com.sun.management.snmp options described here to instrument a JVM for generic monitoring by a customers monitoring tool. I am using SNMP to make this as generic as possible and agnostic with regards to the monitoring solution or vendor.

Are there any performance considerations I should be aware of when using this instrumentation?

Specifically, are there any known issues with the Java SNMP options? This has been around since at least Java 5. I have searched for bugs and performance issues but not found many leads. Is it safe to assume that if there were issues with this option that there would be obvious hits and leads about those issues?

Do calls to get SNMP data or broadcast SNMP data to a trap effect the running state of the VM?

Answer 1

You should be able tune the thread priority to match your performance requirements, eg. give the management thread the lowest priority.

Management protocols are "cooperative" by design (ie. you allow access to the management info), ie. the management application should not on purpose do harm to the things it manages. That would be a bug.