Eugene Bogaart's Weblog: GlassFish in the land of Windmills, Wooden shoes and ...

On March 30 Sun Microsystems Nederlands hosts a Dev BrainSt||rm session of Sogeti. In this session we re going to stretch and bend the Glassfish application server in different directions. Below is a description of different exercises that people can choose of. Exercises are based on the Glassfish Bootcamp held at different location around the world.

Exercise 1a: Install & deploy a web application with Web Admin Console

Prepare: GlassFish 2.1 install.jar and Jdk 5 of Jdk 6

Install as developer configuration. Instuctions on developer setup are on glassfish download page

Start domain: bin/asadmin start-domain

Next follow task 1 of the Glassfish Bootcamp

Exercise 1b: Webservices Sample monitoring

Next follow task 2 of the Glassfish Bootcamp

Exercise 1c: Deploy, manage and Monitor using CLI

Next follow task 3 of the Glassfish Bootcamp

Exercise 1d: Use Call Flow monitoring

In the administrative console goto the node: Application Server, Select tab: monitor, Select sub-tab - Call flow, click button: clear Data (if any data from a previous run is still on the page listed).
Check box: Enable CallFlow monitor, Click Button: Save

Go back to exercise 1b, to generated activity on a deployed webservice.

Return to the call flow monitor page and drill down the captured data.

Exercise 2: Perfomance Advisor

This exercise is about installing and using the performance advisor. The main documentation is found here. Use the Glassfish configuration of the previous exercise and download the Performance Advisor add-on here.

In the Quick Start manual is covered how the installation process works. Whenever the add-on is visible in the Admin Console, then your done! Playing around and testing it is left upto you as an additional exercise. A sample on how it maybe used, is in the a screencast here.
Note: this add-on is only available for existing customers.

Exercise 3: Performance Monitor

Complementary to exercise 2, a stand alone tool for performance monitoring is available to hook up to GlassFish. This monitor is based upon the Visual VM project and can be used to monitor, profile, analyze threads, and monitor and control Java applications across the entire network.

In the Quick Start Guide is covered how the installation process works and the tool is started. The required zip file on sunsolve. A sample on how it is used you may find in the second part of this screencast here.
Note: this add-on is only available for existing customers.

Exercise 4: SNMP Monitoring

Instead of using JMX to monitor behaviour of an Application Server, one can use SNMP. If you need a short intro on SNMP look here. To use snmp we need to do two steps. First, add and enable SNMP in GlassFish and second run a tool that understands the MIB and connect to GlassFish. The required sunolve download can be found here.

Step 1: In the Quick Start Guide is covered how the SNMP installation process works (skip the steps about snmpwalk, we will use another tool).

Step 2: Download a SNMP/MIB browser. I suggest you use iReasoning MIB Browser Free Personal Edition. After starting the tool load the J2EE MIB definition. This MIB definition can be found near the bottom of the J2EE management web page.
Note: The SNMP add-on is only available for existing customers.

Exercise 5:Create a cluster and deploy a web application

Install as cluster configuration (if you did one of the previous exercise then remove the directory). Instructions on cluster setup are on the glassfish download page

Next follow task 4 of the Glassfish Bootcamp