Hawkular - Introducing Hawkular Java Agent

Installation

To install the Hawkular Java Agent, you simply pass in a -javaagent JVM command line argument to your Java or JVM application start command. You must have the agent jar (hawkular-javaagent-#.#.#.jar) and its YAML configuration file located somewhere on your file system, and pass in an argument such as this:

-javaagent:hawkular-javaagent-*.jar=config=hawkular-javaagent-config.yaml,delay=60"

Of course, make sure the path names point to the correct Hawkular Java Agent jar and its configuration file. The delay option tells the agent to delay its start up the given number of seconds. This is useful to give your main application time to start up before the agent starts monitoring it.

Installing Inside a WildFly or EAP Server

It is recommended you copy the Hawkular Java Agent jar to the WildFly/EAP bin/ directory and its configuration file to the standalone/configuration directory, but their locations really do not matter so long as you refer to their proper file paths in the -javaagent command line argument (e.g. -javaagent:<path-to-jar>=config=<path-to-config-file>,delay=60).

Important

Due to the way the logging implementations are loaded, you must change your WildFly/EAP server’s standalone.conf file slightly:

# Hawkular Java Agent: Add "org.jboss.logmanager" to the JBoss Modules system packages
if [ "x$JBOSS_MODULES_SYSTEM_PKGS" = "x" ]; then
   JBOSS_MODULES_SYSTEM_PKGS="org.jboss.byteman,org.jboss.logmanager"
fi

# Hawkular Java Agent:
#   Explicitly tell the VM to use the JBoss Log Manager via -Djava.util.logging.manager system property.
#   Use the -javaagent VM option to load the Hawkular Java Agent with its config file.
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.jboss.logmanager.LogManager -javaagent:$JBOSS_HOME/bin/hawkular-javaagent-*.jar=config=$JBOSS_HOME/standalone/configuration/hawkular-javaagent-config.yaml,delay=60"

Configuration

The Hawkular Java Agent is configured with a YAML configuration file, though if you have used the Hawkular WildFly Agent, the YAML configuration properties will look familiar. The configuration model and the names themselves closely mimic that of the Hawkular WildFly Agent standalone.xml configuration settings.

For an example configuration that instructs the Hawkular Java Agent to monitor a EAP 7.0 or 7.1 server, see this config file.

For an example configuration that instructs the Hawkular Java Agent to monitor a simple JMX application, see this config file.