Remote profiling/monitoring with VisualVM on vagrant + play framework application.

Hi all, I’m newbie to Java world when our company’s moving to Scala. Now I’m profiling performance issue of our system. I’ve tried jprofiler, yourkit, but it was expired ^^. When I was searching for a free tool, I see VisualVM. Oh.. It’s offical tool for Java! It’s as good as Mysql Workbench for MySQL! That’s really what I need!

Let’s install it for our development environment. It’s interesting!
Our working environment: local one is MacOS, remote development server is CenOS on Vagrant, Scala application built on activator.

1. Download & install VisualVM
* http://visualvm.java.net/download.html It’s java world, so it should not depend on your OS. If you’re working with Java/Scala than it’s ok. So don’t worry if your computer is using Window or Ubuntu.

2. Config your remote host
* There’s some kind of Java app. Add the configuration to default for any java app is good, do it like this:
export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9010 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=192.168.33.40"
* hostname is my local vagrant ip setting, port is the defined by myself
* Now start your application! Hey.. in my environment, it’s not work, because I use activator, it not include JAVA_OPTS automatically. So I added it to my command manually to call application like this:
./activator "project my-application" -J-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote -J-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9010 -J-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -J-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -J-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=192.168.33.40 run
* yes, -J prefix for additional Java options ^^

3. Open VisualVM (local) and connect to remote app to monitor
* On Application/Remote add your host, in my case : 192.168.33.40
* Add JMX Connection: 192.168.33.40:9010
*
* It should be connected to your remote app, and you can monitor it now:
*

4. Enjoy it!