Friday, September 21, 2012

Overview monitoring tools Oracle JRockit

Several monitoring options for the JRockit JVM are available. jps, jstat and jconsole are monitoring tools provided by the Oracle (previously Sun) JDK. Jps and jstat are commandline tools for obtaining information about running JVM’s. JConsole is a GUI suitable to monitor JVM’s supporting Java Management Extensions (JMX) such as JRockit. Oracle provides JVM monitoring software for JRockit (which can also be used for other JVM's); Mission Control which consists of several tools which can help in for example detection of memory leaks.

To monitor the JRockit JVM, it has to be started with the -Xmanagement option. This option is the same as using the following startup options for the Oracle (previously Sun) JVM:
 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=7091
 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false

Oracle (previously Sun) JVM tooling

Commandline tools

jps

The jps utility lists the virtual machines for the current user on the target system. The utility is useful in environments where the VM is started using the JNI Invocation API rather than the standard Java launcher. In these environments, it is not always easy to recognize the Java processes in the process list. The jps tool alleviates this problem.

The following example demonstrates the use of the jps utility. Enter jps on the command line, and the utility lists the virtual machines and process IDs for which the user has access rights

$ jps
16217 MyApplication
16342 jps

jstat

The jstat utility uses the JVM's built-in instrumentation to provide information on performance and resource consumption of running applications. The tool is useful for diagnosing performance issues, particularly issues related to heap sizing and garbage collection. jstatd is a daemon which can be used to use jstat to connect to a remote machine.

JConsole

If you start an application with JRockit in -Xmanagement mode, you'll be able to connect with Sun's jconsole tool to the JVM. See also in the introduction.

Overhead on the JVM for using JConsole is small; 3% to 4 %. See; http://weblogs.java.net/blog/emcmanus/archive/2006/07/how_much_does_i.html

Local monitoring

To monitor a local application, it must be running with the same user ID as jconsole.  The command syntax to start jconsole for local monitoring is:

jconsole [processID]
where processID is the application's process ID (PID). To determine an application's PID:

On Windows systems, use Task Manager to find the PID of java or javaw.
You can also use the jps command-line utility to determine PIDs.

For example, if you determined that the process ID of the application is 2956, then you would start jconsole as follows:

jconsole 2956

Both jconsole and the application must by executed by the same user name. The management and monitoring system uses the operating system's file permissions.

If you don't specify a process ID, jconsole will automatically detect all local Java applications, and display a dialog box that lets you select the one you want to monitor.

Remote monitoring

To start jconsole for remote monitoring, use this command syntax:

jconsole [hostName:portNum]
where hostName is the name of the system running the application and portNum is the port number you specified when you enabled the JMX agent when you started the JVM.

If you do not specify a host name/port number combination, then jconsole will display a connection dialog box enabling you to enter a host name and port number.

See below, Connection options under JRockit Mission Control for more information on the type of the connection.

JRockit Mission Control

Discovery options

Local

You can connect to locally discovered JRockits if the discovered JRockit is R27.1 or later and runs Java SE 5.0 or later.

JDP

JRockit instances are discovered automatically through JDP (JRockit Discovery Protocol) if the autodiscovery parameter is set to true (-Xmanagement:autodiscovery=true). The broadcast port for JDP can be specified in the JRockit Mission Control preferences and as a parameter upon starting the JVM.

Example parameters for starting JRockit (can be added in the Weblogic script which starts the relevant domain)
java -Xmanagement:ssl=false,authenticate=false,port=7091,autodiscovery=true

Connection options

Java Management Extensions (JMX) are accessed via RMI to obtain JVM instance information.

The JMX technology provides the tools for building distributed, Web-based, modular and dynamic solutions for managing and monitoring devices, applications, and service-driven networks. By design, this standard is suitable for adapting legacy systems, implementing new management and monitoring solutions, and plugging into those of the future. Starting with the J2SE platform 5.0, JMX technology is included in the Java SE platform.

RMI (remote method invocation) can be used to connect to JMX (MXBEANS or platform MBEANS) instances. In the references section there is a link to an example on how to implement this.

JRockit Mission control toolset 

Memory leak detection

BEA JRockit 1.4.2 (R26.2), BEA JRockit 5.0 sp1 and forward fully support the stand-alone Memory Leak Detector.

Memory leak detection is a tool which analyses the runtime of a JVM. Running the tool against a JVM has a small overhead cost most noticeable during garbage collection.

Memory leak detection can be used as followed;
- the Trend analyzer can be used to determine which objects have the fastest growth in bytes/second. The Trend analyzer can also help identifying targets which occupy a lot of heap space or have large numbers of instances
- once an interesting class has been identified, the Types tab can be used to identify causality and related objects
- to obtain more information about where the problem is occurring or which specific setting might cause it, specific instances can be analyzed of selected types and an allocation stack trace can be conducted. These cause more overhead to the JVM

JRockit Runtime Analyzer

The JRockit Runtime Analyzer consists of two parts. One is running inside the JVM and recording information about the JVM and the Java application currently running. This information is saved to a file which is then opened in the other part: the analyzer tool. This is a regular Java application used to visualize the information contained in the JRA recording file.

Recordings can be created from the Management Console, by using the jrcmd command line tool or by specifying recording options at the JRockit commandline.

On Windows, the commandline for jrcmd is as followed;

bin\jrcmd.exe <pid> jrarecording time=<jrarecording time>
filename=<filename>

The JRA tool provides the most extensive information on JVM usage, garbage collection, heap usage, etc. Since it is based on recording information during a set period and analyzing the data afterwards, timing becomes important if you want to use this tool to analyze runtime problems. During recording the overhead is small.

JRockit Management Console

The Management Console system and JVM behavior. It also has the option to set notifications for example, send an e-mail when a certain heap size is reached. Also the management console allows to increase the heap size at runtime to for example postpone an out of heapspace error. Also JRA recordings can be started as a result of for example high heap space usage to determine the problem.

The Management console has to be running in order to provide notifications, but using commandline options, it can be started in headless mode. Also using commandline options it can be set to connect to a JVM.

References

Jps and jstat
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/#monitor

JConsole documentation
http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/tooldocs/share/jconsole.html

Oracle JRockit R28 documentation
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/jrockit/documentation/index.html

BEA JRockit R27 documentation
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic/documentation/weblogic-jrockit-089130.html

JMX Technology Home Page
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/javamanagement-140525.html

Using RMI to connect to a JRockit JVM instance
https://blogs.oracle.com/pacogomez/entry/monitoring_jrockit_through_a_f

How much does it cost to monitor an app with jconsole?
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/emcmanus/archive/2006/07/how_much_does_i.html

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