adam bien's blog

How to monitor java apps without additional tools or frameworks 📎

Especially during the loadtesting phase or during the realization of technical prototypes, it is often useful to monitor local and remote java applications. Java SE 5 comes already with a built-in solution. To monitor an application you have to provide only one system parameter:  -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote. To monitor the Swingset demoapp you have only to invoke it in the following way: [JAVA_HOME/demo/jfc/swingset2/]> java -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote SwingSet2.jar

Now you can monitor this process using jconsole, a useful tool coming with Java 5. Especially interesting is the tab MBeans>OperatingSystem. Here you can even access the information about the OS. Jconsole is especially useful during the loadtest, which can be accomplished using the jmeter - an useful and free load generator.