5 Using JMX Connectors to Manage Resources Remotely
The Java Management Extensions Instrument Specification and the Agent Specification sections of Java Management Extensions (JMX) Specification, version 1.4 define the concept of connectors. A connector makes a JMX technology MBean server accessible to remote Java technology-based clients. The client end of a connector exports essentially the same interface as the MBean server.
A connector consists of a connector client and a connector server. The connector server is attached to an MBean server and listens for connection requests from clients. The connector client establishes a connection with the connector server. A connector client is usually in a different JVM from the connector server, and often runs on a different machine.
Many connector implementations are possible. In particular, there are many possibilities for the protocol used to communicate over a connection between client and server.
A connector server usually has an address, used to establish connections between connector clients and the connector server. Alternatively, some connectors can provide connection stubs to establish connections. The way in which connections are established depends on the discovery and lookup technology that you use. See Discovery and Lookup Services.
RMI Connector
The JMX Remote API defines a standard protocol based on RMI. The RMI connector must be present in every implementation of the JMX Remote API.
The RMI connector supports the Java Remote Method Protocol (JRMP) transport.
The RMI connector over JRMP provides a simple mechanism for securing and authenticating the connection between a client and a server. This mechanism provides a basic level of security for environments using the RMI connector. Note that the generic JMXMP connector provides a more advanced level of security.
You can improve the security of the RMI connector over JRMP by using an RMI socket factory so that the connection between the client and the server uses the Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
Note:
JMX has a built-in filter to limit a set of classes allowed to be sent as a
deserializing parameters over RMI to the server. Specify the filter's pattern with
the com.sun.management.jmxremote.serial.filter.pattern management
property in the
$JAVA_HOME/conf/management/management.properties
file. See Built-in Filters in Java Platform, Standard Edition Core
Libraries for more information.
User-Defined Protocols
The JMX Remote API does not define a connector for every protocol. You can implement a connector based on a protocol that is not defined in the JMX Remote API. For example, you can implement connector based on a protocol that uses HTTP/S. The JMX Specification describes how to implement a connector based on a user-defined protocol.