Obtain useful data from WebSphere JVM

Question

I would like to attach to a WebSphere JVM and obtain useful data like garbage collectors' names and their collection counts, thread counts, heap/non-heap memory usage, JVM uptime etc. However, this link gives the list of MBeans available with the WebSphere JVM -

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.websphere.javadoc.wsfep.doc%2Fweb%2FmbeanDocs%2Findex.html

These MBeans don't seem to offer any data that I require. Is there any other way to obtain the data? I shall be using JMX to gather it.

Answer 1

If you're a corporate with bucks to spend I would suggest a product like Wily Introscope which runs an agent along with your JVM to collect all the metrics that you are after. I have used it with Websphere servers. Searching for an Open Source alternative I came across GlassBox which may provide a low cost alternative for you.

I'm not aware of any default MBeans that will provide the coverage you're after. It's typically the big Java vendors that provide this type of functionality.

[Update]

Having done something recently using VisualVM with Websphere 7, for the purposes of real-time monitoring/troubleshooting, I thought I would share my knowledge. VisualVM comes with the standard Sun JDK and you will find it installed here: JAVA_HOME\\bin\\jvisualvm.exe

To enable the JRE in Websphere to allow VisualVM to connect you must add the following JVM parameters using the Websphere Admin Console

Go To: Application Servers > [server_name] > Java and Process Management > Process definition > Java Virtual Machine > Generic JVM arguments

-Djavax.management.builder.initial= 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1099 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false

Make sure that the port number you have chosen above is not already in use

netstat -ap | grep 1099

Restart the server and you will be able to connect using VisualVM to see Uptime, Threads, Heap and GC profiles.

I see that Sun have also documented how you can write your own Java JMX client to read these values.

Answer 2

You could go with the suggestions provided by Brad and Andreas.

I would like to give you some insights into some of the tools that should be explored

(1) Tivoli Performance Viewer. This should provide some information about the JVM.

(2) IBM Health Center -> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/tools/healthcenter/

Both of these should provide you a lot of info that you require.

Try them out

Answer 3

The JVM statistics are provided by the platform MXBeans. If you need to collect this data over a short period of time, then you could use a tool such as VisualVM. It's a bit tricky to configure this to connect to a WebSphere instance, but it is possible. One way to do that (there are other options) is described here:

http://code.google.com/p/xm4was/wiki/VisualVMHowTo

If you want to collect the data over a longer period of time, then you need a monitoring system. At work, I wrote a plugin for the Open Source RHQ enterprise management system that adds support for WebSphere. I'm in the process of releasing this plugin as an Open Source project , but at the time of writing, I have not yet published the documentation and there is also no downloadable release yet. Only the source code is available right now. I will try to complete that in the next weeks. If you are interested in this project, please let me know.