Understanding WebLogic (JMX) monitoring

Posted: May 14th, 2008 | Author: TnT Admin | Filed under: Concepts | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments »

What’s WebLogic (JMX) all about in LoadRunner? If you are not J2EE background professional and caught up in a load test for WebLogic servers, this article will be useful to you as we’ve put together information to help you get a better understanding of JMX (Java Management Extensions). We will be going through the fundamentals of JMX and how it works in together with LoadRunner. We will also be touching on the reference list of available counters provided by WebLogic. If you like to know the configuration details, look out the Monitor Reference that comes together with the installer (which is pretty easy to configure).

What’s JMX in the first place!

JMX (Java Management Extensions) technology provides a simple, standard way of managing resources such as applications, devices, and services. Because JMX technology is dynamic, you can use it to monitor and manage resources as they are created, installed and implemented. (Source: Sun Microsystems, “Ch1 : Introduction to JMX Technology”)

A simple illustration of how the JMX architecture can be found in Wiki, “Java Management Extensions”. This will give you an overview of the different levels and how the communication work between them.

Additional references can be found in Sun Microsystems which we recommend browsing through to get an general understanding of this technology.

Ok, now we’ve got an understanding on JMX. In the context of WebLogic, JMX is in place to monitor the resources usage of the server.

How does WebLogic (JMX) monitoring work in LoadRunner?

JMX specification is designed to monitor Java applications from another Java application. Therefore, in order for LoadRunner to monitor WebLogic resources via JMX, it will be required that LoadRunner to be a Java-application to perform the monitoring and collect the data from the MBeans. This is achieved by installing JDK of the same version as the WebLogic server and running a mini version of application server in the LoadRunner machine to collect the monitoring data which is reason the installation of JDK as well as the copying of the weblogic.jar file is required.

What can you get from WebLogic (JMX) monitoring?

You will be able to monitor the runtime state of the WebLogic via JMX from the Runtime MBeans. The list of JMX counters can be found in “WebLogic Server MBean Reference”.

If you need to see how much time is spent or breakdown on individual methods, SQL calls or even the chain of calls, you are looking at the wrong tool. You may like to explore Diagnostics for a solution. Refer to “What’s Diagnostics?” for more information

We’ve put together a list of references that will you understand the JMX technology and also the fundamentals that WebLogic (JMX) working with LoadRunner. We hope this information is useful to you. If you have additional information with regards to the monitoring, please feel free to write in to us.

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3 Comments on “Understanding WebLogic (JMX) monitoring”

  1. 1 suresh said at 11:03 am on July 31st, 2008:

    Hi Thanks a lot for creating a such a wonderful blog. Could you please explain this web logic server monitoring more in terms of counters normally we are interested in to measure. It would be better if you give an example of counter how you monitor in your experience. There is nothing more precious than learning from experience. Thanks in advance Suresh

  2. 2 TnT Admin said at 8:18 pm on July 31st, 2008:

    Hi Suresh,

    Thanks for the comments. As for the counters to monitor for a WebLogic server is varies to your requirements. Depends largely on what you want to see as there are alot of things you can watch for. For example, you can look at the current heap size or the number of JMS message queue, consumer, etc… Myself won’t be able to comment much, however a good resource is Java Performance Tuning website at http://www.javaperformancetuning.com/ which have great articles on monitoring and tuning. As WebLogic is based on J2EE specifications, it will be good to refer to the site. Regards

  3. 3 Vijay L said at 9:21 pm on November 19th, 2008:

    Weblogic Managed Servers can be used as web servers and appservers. Before Load Test, collect the mertric of weblogic performance attributes Start the Load Test You can do baby sit monitor through weblogic console You can automate this process using mbeans – Until we get to know about weblogic performance attributes there vl be value add to monitoring

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