Monitoring JVM metrics via JMX management interface in JMeter

What do we need:

• any java application (doesn’t matter whether it was written in Java/Play/Groovy/JPython etc)
• PerfMon Server Agent
• Apache JMeter wiith jmeter-plugins installed

Once you have plugins installed them in the jMeter’s lib/ext folder, then:

1. On the box you want to monitor, copy templates: jmxremote.password & jmxremote.access from $JAVA_HOME/lib/management to for example: /srv/play/
2. edit them according to your liking
3. launch your JAVA application with additional parameters:

   java \
       -jar your_application.jar \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=10006 \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=/srv/play/jmxremote.password \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=/srv/play/jmxremote.access
   

4. start a server-agent (http://jmeter-plugins.org/wiki/PerfMonAgent/ ) on the host which JVM metrics you want to monitor using command like:

   cd ${jmeter_folder}/lib/ext/
   java \
      -jar ./CMDRunner.jar \
      --tool PerfMonAgent \
      --udp-port 0 \
      --tcp-port 7777
   

   You can also run it as background process and detach from your session, so it will continue to work even if you disconnect from the server.

   cd ${jmeter_folder}/lib/ext/
   nohup java \
      -jar ./CMDRunner.jar \
      --tool PerfMonAgent \
      --udp-port 0 \
      --tcp-port 7777 &
   

5. add “PerfMon Metrics Collector” to your test plan
6. provide the hostname/IP address of the box running server-agent in the “Host/IP” field (don’t forget about the port :) )
7. select JMX as the “Metric to collect”
8. double click on “Metric parameter” field and then click on the “...” button to the right
9. enter all the credentials that the server-agent will use to connect to the local JVM via JMX port. Here’s an example config:

   url=localhost\:10006:user=role:password=password:gc-time
   

   Where role & password are of course defined in the jmxremote.password & jmxremote.access files

btw. Here’s an example test plan with preconfigured PerfMon listener.
If everything was configured properly the you should see something like that on the PerfMon graph: