Sun Microsystems
Products & Services
 
Support & Training
 
 

Previous Previous     Contents     Index     Next Next
Part III

Remote Management Applications

In Part II, Agent Applications, we saw how to access and manage a Java dynamic management agent through the HTML protocol adaptor. Protocol adaptors provide a view of an agent through communication protocols. In this part, we present protocol connectors and proxy MBeans for managing agents programmatically.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit (Java DMK) 5.1 integrates the Java Management Extensions (JMX) Remote API specification to provide the means to develop remote management applications in the Java programming language. These remote applications establish connections with agents through protocol connectors over remote method invocation (RMI) or over a new custom protocol, the JMX messaging protocol (JMXMP). Connections are established between a client object and a server object, via one of these protocols. The connector client object exposes a remote version of the MBean server interface. The connector server object in the agent transmits management requests to the MBean server and forwards any replies.

Connectors enable you to develop a management application that is both protocol independent and location-independent. Once the connection is established, the communication layer is transparent, and the manager can issue requests as if it were directly calling the MBean server. Using proxy objects that represent MBeans simplifies the design of the management application and reduces development time.

This homogeneity of the API makes it possible to develop portable management applications that can run either in an agent or in a remote management application. This simplifies the development and testing of applications, and it also allows functionality to evolve along with the management solution. As your agent and manager platforms evolve, management policies can be implemented at higher levels of management, and intelligent logic for monitoring and processing can be moved down into agents.

This part contains the following chapters:

  • Chapter 9, Protocol Connectors shows how protocol connectors establish a connection between a management application and a Java dynamic management agent. Once the connection is established, the remote management application can access the MBeans in the agent.

  • Chapter 10, Lookup Services describes the three bindings to existing lookup services implemented by Java DMK, which allow connector servers to advertise themselves to connector clients, and allow clients to find connector servers.

  • Chapter 11, Connector Security presents the security features that can be enabled for a given connection. Both the connectors provide different security mechanisms, with the JMXMP connector also offering simple authentication and security layer (SASL) mechanisms.

Previous Previous     Contents     Index     Next Next