jmx4r 0.0.3, documentation and multiple connections

July 4, 2007

jmx4r 0.0.3 has just been released.
jmx4r is a JRuby library which makes it super easy to write simple Ruby scripts to manage Java applications using JMX.

Two new features in this release:

some much-needed documentation
as requested by Brian McCallister, I've modified the code so that it is now possible to write a script to manage many Java applications at the same time.

For example, the script to trigger a garbage collection on a cluster of Java applications at the same time (quite a bad idea but a simple one):

hosts = ["node1", "node2", "node3", "node4"]
hosts.each do |h|
    memory = JMX::MBean.find_by_name "java.lang:type=Memory", :host => h, :port => port
    memory.gc
end

Quite simple, isn't it?

JMX::MBean#find_by_name and JMX::MBean#find_all_by_name now accept an optional hash where you can specify specific information related to the connection to use (:host, :port, :username, :password or :connection) as described in the documentation. Otherwise, a global connection will be used.

A complete example shows how to display memory usage on 3 Java applications before and after a garbage collection is triggered.

$ jruby -Ilib examples/memory_on_many_nodes.rb    

Before GC:
+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Node           |      Heap Used |  Non Heap Used |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| localhost:3000 |        1264328 |       14414808 |
| localhost:3001 |        1345632 |       14465192 |
| localhost:3002 |        1405072 |       14501936 |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+
After GC:
+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Node           |      Heap Used |  Non Heap Used |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| localhost:3000 |        1142304 |       14421184 |
| localhost:3001 |        1205040 |       14476312 |
| localhost:3002 |        1218928 |       14506672 |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+

As usual, the simplest way to install it is by using RubyGems: jruby -S gem install **jmx4r**.