JMX Monitoring of Sterling OMS using VisualVM

The Java Management Extension JMX provides a standard interface to monitor the health, performance and resources of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). JMX Monitoring is done in real-time by querying data from “Managed Beans” (MBeans) that are exposed via the JMX port. VisualVM JMX CPU profiling is a very powerful to detect performance bottlenecks and ispect the top consuming Java methods.

In this article, I will present how to enable JMX monitoring for IBM sterling Order Management OMS running on IBM Websphere Application Server.

IBM Websphere Application Server WAS:

• Login into WAS admin Console
• Click on Servers >> Server Types >> WebSphere application servers
• Click on the OMS server JVM from the list.
• Expand Java and Process Management under “Server Infrastructure” and click on Process definition
• Click on Java Virtual Machine under “Additional Properties”
• Enter following in “Generic JVM arguments” box

-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=9000 
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=77.77.77.164

Change the last two lines with your OMS Application Server IP and a free port on the server.

Apply the changes and restart the server. Verify that the port is listening with the netstat command.

Note: If your JVM is running inside a docker container use the container external IP in the hostname:

-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=[EXTERNAL_IP_OF_THE_DOCKER_CONTAINER]

Optional: you can also enable JMX on OMS Agent servers.

Enable JMX monitoring on OMS Agent Servers JVM:

• Go to OMSHome/ssfs/bin

• Make a copy of your agentserver.sh starting script :

[oms@myhost bin]$ cp agentserver.sh agentserverJMX.sh 

• Add the following to the newly created file: change to match your IP address and a free port (should be different from the app server JMX port if both running on the same host) :

-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=9099
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=IP.ADD.RE.SS

Like this:

USE_AGENT_JAVA=1
export USE_JAVA_AGENT
AGENT_JAVA_OPTS="-Dvendor=shell 
-DvendorFile=/home/oms/ssfs/properties/servers.properties
-DCACHE_PS=true -DDISABLE_DS_EXTENSIONS=Y
-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=9099
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=9.26.137.xxx
export AGENT_JAVA_OPTS"

• Start your agent with the newly created JMX script:

 ./agentserverJMX.sh DefaultServer

Now you are all set. You will be able to use VisualVM, JConsole or Java Mission Control JMC to monitor your OMS JVM(s). You will need to install JDK 8 or higher on your PC or install VisualVM or other JMX tools separately.

If you don’t have a JDK installed on your workstation, you can download VisualVM from this Github page.

Start jvisualvm from your JDK/bin folder

Start with adding the remote host/port configured earlier to VisualVM :

You can monitor the CPU usage, GC activity, heap memory, thread counts, classes…It is a very useful tool for load testing, peak testing, troubleshooting and debugging:

Powerful CPU sampling and profiling with VisualVM detects Top consuming methods:

To learn more about using VisualVM to monitor and debug Java applications in general, you can watch this short Youtube video here.