Quick Start Guide to Using VisualVM to Monitor JVMs On Remote Hosts.

VisualVM is a tool used to monitor Java Virtual Machines and provide a lightweight profiling capability. From time to time, developers may need to monitor JVMs running at a remote host. VisualVM can be used in conjunction with jstatd to accomplish this task.

jstatd uses the Java remote object registry. This diagram shows the basic architecture at a high-level:

Step 1: get jstatd running.

If jstatd is not running,  create a file called jstatd.all.policy with the following contents:

grant codebase "file:${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar" { permission java.security.AllPermission;};

Start jstatd as follows:

nohup jstatd -J-Djava.security.policy=/path/to/your/jstatd.all.policy &

Step 2: configure VisualVM.

Add the remote host to the VisualVM configuration:

The JVMs on the remote host should show up now:

References:

• VisualVM
• Oracle jstatd documentation
• ldapguru