Curt,
you bring up some very good and valid points. Let me try to address some of these
issues and
point you towards some answers and other potential sources of information.
Areas of Management
If we are going to provide a management solution for EJB (and any other area) we need
two
things :
1) A Standard way to access components and manipulate data, execute methods and get
events.
In the network management world this is provided by SNMP.
2) A Standard, defined model for the component that you are trying to manage.
In the network management world this is like MIB2.
Point 1 provides you with an interface to get at stuff, point 2 provides you with what
you can do when you get there... Without both of these things you don't have a story.
Why SNMP is not a good solution
Many people think that SNMP is that answer to all management needs, and why don't we
just use it for managing distributed applications as well...
Personally I see this as a very bad idea, and here's my reasoning, blow me up if you
like...
The basic premise behind SNMP is the MIB, which is sort of like a distributed database.
Each network host has its bit of the data, and the managemnt system interrogates each
bit
(using SNMP) as necessay to provide uniform management. So far, so good.
Now it seems to me that one of the basic characteristics of a distributed application
is that
it runs on many hosts, that, in fact, it may run ondifferent hosts tomorrow than it
did today,
due to fail over, load balancing, etc.... So, my contention is that a distributed
application
does not run on a host, it runs on a network, OK ?
So now let's try to manage my distributed application using SNMP.
Now this distributed database of MIBs actually has a primary key. What is it.
Well, its the IP address of the host. Without that you don't get anywhere.
OK, so if a distributed application runs on a network and not a computer, then it
has no IP address, nor do its components.
So in order to manage a distributed application using SNMP I basically loose
the primary key of the database, the basic premise behind the management paradigm....
Mmmmmmmmm...
To me everything from then on is just a complete fudge to make it work....
What's currently happening in J2EE management ?
Things are improving in terms of management and J2EE.....
In the first spec, management was mentioned as part of one sentence buried deep
in some forgotten paragraph.
In the 1.2 spec, management has an entire sentence devoted to it,
buried deep in some forgotten paragraph :-)
What this has meant is that every Application Server vendor has implemented their
own solution - all of them bad... Why ? Because they don't know anything about the
management space, they know about Application Servers. So their consoles tend
to be configuration consoles, not runtime operation consoles - big difference !!
Anyway, the people who do know about such things, Tivoli, CA, BMC, etc... can't
manage this stuff because mostly the App Server vendors don't even provide an
external management interface, so they couldn't even if they wanted too.
Also these companies tend to do system management, manage processes and groups of
processes. It can be hard for them to start managing objects and applications that
can contain all sorts of stuff like dependency relationships, etc...
My pesonal opinion is that you can't expect the Application Server Vendors to do
the right thing, the best way is to make it so that the real management players can
have access to the information they need.
But fear not, the world is slowly changing !!!!
There are three, yes, count them, three, standards bodies currently commited to
changing and correcting this problem. (sorry if I missed anybody out :-)
SUN Community Process - JMX (java.sun.com/products/JavaManagement)
This group is about defining the SNMP part of the picture, at least for Java.
It is defining the infrastructure that will allow management systems to talk to
managed components. A competing standard here is WBEM.
SUN Community Process - J2EE Management - the famous Group 77
(java.sun.com/aboutJava/communityprocess/jsr/jsr_077_management.html)
This group has just been formed, and will finally define some management that will
go into the J2EE spec, version 1.3. This group has not yet met, so it is hard to say
what will happen, but I hope that they will adopt JMX and then put some kind of
model on top so that we have both the SNMP and the MIB2 parts to the puzzle.
This way management vendors canthen provide generic solutions for managing this
space.
DMTF - Application Modelling Group (www.dmtf.org)
This group is busy working on a general model for the runtime aspects of a distributed
application. It is hard and slow work, but it is progressing. I hope that some of
this
work may be used by the J2EE group...
Where you can help ?
Curt, I would love you to either get involved in some of these standards bodies
yourself, or
at least to email me with your Operation's Center's use cases, so that we can make sure
that these issues are covered by the standards we propose. I am aware of some of the
problems, but I can sure use some help :-)
I currently strain by being a part of all three of these groups... :-)
Best regards,
Geoff Bullen
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