Trigger Snapshots on Remote Server from local

Question

I am trying to remotely profile alfresco running on a 64-bit linux server running a 1.8 JVM and Apache Tomcat 7.xx from my testing code but can't figure out how to programatically trigger snapshots.

What I want to do is to connect to the remote server, start profiling, and save a snapshot of that server's performance onto my local machine from my testing code which is written in Java.

I've already installed JProfiler 9.2 onto the linux server and can connect and take snapshots via the JProfiler GUI. The server also requires an SSH connection for security. I'd like to do this from my code, similar to how Controller.saveSnapshot(file) works for local JVMs.

Is this possible?

I know I can set triggers and have the remote profiler save snapshots on the server, but this isn't what I want to.

Additionally, I looked into using the command line controller but was unable to get it to connect to the server even with the correct arguments in the remote VM options.

I also tried to use ConnectionFactor.createRemoteConnection(), but don't see an argument that allows for a password to be input, so it fails.

Answer 1

You can access the JProfiler MBean programmatically. Below is an example on how to do that. I would run such a program on the remote machine and start it via SSH, because JMX connnections are difficult to tunnel through SSH.

import javax.management.MBeanServerConnection;
import javax.management.ObjectName;
import javax.management.remote.JMXConnector;
import javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory;
import javax.management.remote.JMXServiceURL;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

// Shows how to connect to the the JProfiler MBean programatically
// The profiled process has to be in offline profiling mode and the JMX server
// has to be started by passing -Djprofiler.jmxServerPort=[port] to the profiled JVM.
// This will not work in nowait mode because the MBean is not registered in that case.
public class MBeanProgrammaticAccessExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        if (args.length == 0) {
            System.out.println("Specify the port as an argument that was passed to " +
                    "the profiled JVM with the VM parameter " +
                    "-Djprofiler.jmxServerPort=[port]");
        }
        String port = args[0];
        // In this case the connection is made to a process on localhost, but it could
        // be on a remote system as well. Note that the connection is made via JMX which
        // does not work well with firewalls
        System.out.println("Connecting to localhost:" + port);
        JMXServiceURL jmxUrl = new JMXServiceURL(
                "service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:" + port + "/jmxrmi");
        JMXConnector connector = JMXConnectorFactory.newJMXConnector(jmxUrl, 
                Collections.<String, Object>emptyMap());

        Map<String, Object> env = new HashMap<>();

        // If you have protected the JMX server with a JMX password file by passing 
        // -Djprofiler.jmxPasswordFile=[file] to the profiled JVM, you can specify 
        // the password like this:
        //env.put(JMXConnector.CREDENTIALS, new String[] {"username", "password"});

        connector.connect(env);
        MBeanServerConnection connection = connector.getMBeanServerConnection();
        ObjectName objectName = new ObjectName(
                "com.jprofiler.api.agent.mbean:type=RemoteController");
        if (!connection.isRegistered(objectName)) {
            throw new RuntimeException("JProfiler MBean not found.");
        }

        RemoteControllerMBean mbeanProxy = JMX.newMBeanProxy(connection, 
                objectName, RemoteControllerMBean.class, true);

        // You can look up all available operations in the javadoc of 
        // com.jprofiler.api.agent.mbean.RemoteControllerMBean
        System.out.println("Recording CPU data for 5 seconds ....");
        mbeanProxy.startCPURecording(true);
        // If you do not want a dependency on the JProfiler classes 
        // you can make the above call like this:
        //connection.invoke(objectName, "startCPURecording", new Object[] {true},
        // new String[] {Boolean.TYPE.getName()});

        Thread.sleep(5000);
        System.out.println("Saving snapshot to the working directory " +
                "of the profiled JVM ....");
        mbeanProxy.saveSnapshot("snapshot.jps");

        connector.close();
        System.out.println("Success");

    }
}