Introduction

The Java Dynamic Management^TM Kit is a Java^TM based solution for building and distributing management intelligence into system, application, and network devices. It achieves this by providing a set of Java classes and tools that simplify the development of dynamically extensible agents.

An agent is an application which provides one or more services. Agents act as invisible assistants, alerting you to potential problems throughout the network or performing management tasks without human intervention. Agents are smart, autonomous, and dynamic. They can download management services from the management web server, pulling new management services as soon as they become available. This allows new management services to be implemented and started at any time.

How Is It Different?

Firstly, network management, under the current paradigm, is performed by management applications. These management applications are aided by agents. The agents act as interpreters and filters, sending commands to the network elements they control and collecting information about them. They are usually situated near the network elements they control, which means that these agents are limited in nature, as they contain little management intelligence and can only perform basic network management operations.

Secondly, and from a wider perspective, existing system, application, and network management systems are implemented with diverse protocols and technologies. Developers must choose a single management technology for a portion of the target market. In some cases, developers may implement multiple management technologies, in order to provide more complete coverage of their potential markets. Frequently, developers choose not to implement any management technology, in order not to be encumbered in the market.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit solves both of these problems. It is a single suite of products offering a uniform instrumentation for managing system, application, and network management systems. It is also a key enabling technology for the service-driven network. The service-driven network is a new approach to the provision of network computing that concentrates on the services you want to provide. These services range from the low-level services that manage relationships between networked devices to the value-added services you provide to end-users. These services drive your network. With the Java Dynamic Management Kit, services are incorporated directly into agents. Agents are granted permission to perform management tasks themselves, enabling management intelligence to be distributed throughout the whole network.

Thus, the Java Dynamic Management Kit opens the door to new types of lightweight, flexible management applications that can be created, deployed, enhanced or deleted in real time.

What Other Benefits Does It Offer?

The Java Dynamic Management Kit is different in that it offers more functionality than any other network management product of its kind. This unique combination of features gives the Java Dynamic Management Kit a wide domain of application.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit supports management protocols, such as SNMP. It also uses a dynamic web-based pull mechanism enabling new services to be downloaded from the Web server at runtime. Services are not only implemented inside devices, but can also be network-based, stored as files in very simple Web pages in the same way as Java technology-based applets. This dynamic, on-demand paradigm means that it is no longer necessary to know what will need to be configured, managed, and monitored in the future or in advance of network deployment. Services can be created and downloaded as needed. Autonomous management functionality is yet another key feature of the Java Dynamic Management Kit, allowing a very large installed base to be managed.

How Does It Work?

The Java Dynamic Management Kit relies on Java Management extensions (JMX) principles to manage resources. In order to ensure that your resource is a manageable resource, you need to make sure that it adheres to the JMX specification, as the JMX instrumentation level provides a specification for implementing JMX manageable resources. Manageable resources are implemented as Managed Beans, or simply MBeans. An MBean is a manageable resources that conforms to certain design patterns and may be any resource you wish to manage (for example, an application, an implementation of a service, a device, a user, and so forth). These resources are developed in Java, or at least offer a Java wrapper, and have been instrumented so that they can be managed by JMX-compliant applications. For more information regarding MBeans, please refer to "MBeans".

The Java Dynamic Management Kit is the first commercial product to implement the public specification for the Java Management extensions (JMX). JMX defines an architecture, design patterns, APIs, and services for application and network management, all under a single umbrella specification. For more information regarding JMX, see the Java Management Extensions specifications document provided with the Java Dynamic Management Kit.

One of the greatest advantages of the Java Dynamic Management Kit is that it allows you to manage resources from a remote location. Thus, you can manipulate proxy objects which transparently map onto MBeans in a remote agent.

You can access all remote JMX manageable resources by:

• Getting an attribute value

• Changing an attribute value

• Invoking an operation

• Receiving a notification emitted by a manageable resource

The manager can also add new remote JMX manageable resources by:

• Using existing Java classes already loaded in the agent

• Using new classes downloaded from an arbitrary location

The Java Dynamic Management Kit greatly simplifies the development of management applications by providing multi-protocol communication between the manager side and the agent side. Devices or applications can be managed directly via a basic Web browser or through an existing SNMP management application. An extensible set of protocol adaptors (for example, HTTP/TCP, RMI, SNMP) is provided to allow developers to adapt their applications to the local communication environment.

To create brand new agents, use a managed object generator (proxygen), which is provided with the Java Dynamic Management Kit. With this tool, you can create applications with automatically-generated remote access modules that handle communication support and protocol transparency. Simply put, you can create a proxy object for each JMX object you wish to manage remotely.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit also provides a toolkit for developing SNMP agents and managers, including the mibgen compiler, which takes as input a set of SNMP MIBs and generates standard MBeans that implement the MIBs.

What Development Tools Are Provided?

The Java Dynamic Management Kit provides:

• A management architecture which supports the JMX specification. This architecture, in turn, provides a set of Web-based mechanisms for automatic propagation of management services across the network to the agents.

• An agent framework, which includes a library of reusable core agent services in the form of management components based on the JavaBeans^TM architecture. New services can be plugged in and old services removed as management requirements evolve. The services supplied include the following: monitoring, timer, mlet, and filtering.

• Service creation tools, which include:

  • A managed object generator (proxygen), which helps developers to create their own specific Java technology-based client management services.

  • A Java technology-based SNMP MIB Compiler (mibgen) which takes an SNMP MIB as input and outputs a set of Managed Beans. These MBeans implement the MIBs, enabling the JDMK agent to be managed by an SNMP manager.