JMX

Apache ActiveMQ has extensive support for JMX to allow you to monitor and control the behavior of the broker via the JMX MBeans.

Using JMX to monitor Apache ActiveMQ

You can enable/disable JMX support as follows...

1. Run a broker setting the broker property useJmx to true (enabled by default) i.e.

For xbean configuration

<broker useJmx="true" brokerName="BROKER1">
...
</broker>

2. Run a JMX console

$ jconsole 

3. The ActiveMQ broker should appear in the list of local connections, if you are running JConsole on the same host as ActiveMQ.

JMX remote access

Remote connections to JMX are not enabled by default in the activemq.xml for security reasons. Please refer to Java Management guide to configure the broker for remote management.

Using the Apache ActiveMQ version on OS X it appears as follows:

ActiveMQ MBeans Reference

For additional references provided below is a brief hierarchy of the mbeans and a listing of the properties, attributes, and operations of each mbeans.

Command line utilities are also available to let you monitor ActiveMQ. Refer to ActiveMQ Command Line Tools Reference for usage information.

JMX API is also exposed via REST management API

Password Protecting the JMX Connector

(For Java 1.5+)

1. Make sure JMX is enabled, but tell ActiveMQ not create its own connector so that it will use the default JVM JMX connector.

<broker xmlns="http://activemq.org/config/1.0" brokerName="localhost"useJmx="true">

  ...

  <managementContext>
     <managementContext createConnector="false"/>
  </managementContext>

  ...

</broker>

2. Create access and password files

conf/jmx.access:

# The "monitorRole" role has readonly access.
# The "controlRole" role has readwrite access.
monitorRole readonly
controlRole readwrite

conf/jmx.password:

# The "monitorRole" role has password "abc123".
# The "controlRole" role has password "abcd1234".
monitorRole abc123
controlRole abcd1234

(Make sure both files are not world readable - more info can be find here to protect files)

For more details you can see the Monitoring Tomcat Document

3. Modify the "activemq" startup script (in bin) to enable the Java 1.5+ JMX connector

Find the "ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START=" line and change it too the following: (note that in previous versions of ActiveMQ this property was called SUNJMX in some scripts.  As of v5.12.0 all scripts use ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START):

1. Windows

  ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1616 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=%ACTIVEMQ_BASE%/conf/jmx.password \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=%ACTIVEMQ_BASE%/conf/jmx.access

2. Unix

  ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1616 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=${ACTIVEMQ_BASE}/conf/jmx.password \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=${ACTIVEMQ_BASE}/conf/jmx.access"

This could be set in /etc/activemq.conf instead (if you have root access):

1. Windows

ACTIVEMQ_HOME=DRIVE_LETTER:/where/ActiveMQ/is/installed
ACTIVEMQ_BASE=%ACTIVEMQ_HOME%
ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START=-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1616 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=%ACTIVEMQ_BASE%/conf/jmx.password \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=%ACTIVEMQ_BASE%/conf/jmx.access

2. Unix

ACTIVEMQ_HOME=DRIVE_LETTER:/where/ActiveMQ/is/installed
ACTIVEMQ_BASE=${ACTIVEMQ_HOME}
ACTIVEMQ_SUNJMX_START="-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1616 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=${ACTIVEMQ_BASE}/conf/jmx.password \
    -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=${ACTIVEMQ_BASE}/conf/jmx.access"

4. Start ActiveMQ

You should be able to connect to JMX on the JMX URL

service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://<your hostname>:1616/jmxrmi

And you will be forced to login.

Selective MBean registration

In situations where you need to scale your broker to large number of connections, destinations and consumers it can become very expensive to keep JMX MBeans for all those objects. Instead of turning off JMX completely, starting with 5.12.0, you can selectively suppress registration of some types of MBeans and thus help your broker scale, while still having a basic view of the broker state.

For example, the following configuration will exclude all dynamic producers, consumers, connections and advisory topics from registering their MBeans

<managementContext>
<managementContext 
   suppressMBean="endpoint=dynamicProducer,endpoint=Consumer,connectionName=*,destinationName=ActiveMQ.Advisory.*"
/>
</managementContext>

ManagementContext Properties Reference