Version 11
Created by jayshaughnessy on Jan 15, 2009 9:56 AM. Last modified by jayshaughnessy on Jan 20, 2011 10:55 AM.

    Purpose

    To provide Jopr management and monitoring support for Standalone Tomcat containers provided.  The Tomcat plugin planned compatibilty is for JBoss Enterprise Web Server (EWS) and Apache distributions of Tomcat. The plugin is design to monitor and manage the following server instances:

     

    • EWS V1.0.0
      • Tomcat 5 Server
      • Tomcat 6 Server
    • Apache
      • Tomcat 5 Server (EWS packaged versions)
      • Tomcat 6 Server (EWS packaged versions)

    Management Summary

    WIth JBossON and JBoss EWS customers will have a fully supported, fully managed Tomcat web application platform.  EWS will provide current, Red Hat endorsed versions of Tomcat and Httpd.  JBossON will provide powerful management via its Tomcat and Apache Httpd plugins.

     

    Management Features will include:

     

    • Built-in EWS hooks to easily enable JBossON management.
    • Tomcat Server management
      • Start/Stop/Restart
      • Authenticated security support
    • Virtual Host management
    • Web Application management
      • Start/Stop/Reload
      • Deploy/Undeploy
      • Version management
      • Response Time monitoring
      • Cache management
    • Live User Management
      • Role Create/Delete/Assignment/Configuration
      • User Create/Delete/Configuration
      • Group Create/Delete/Assignment/Configuration
    • Connector Management
      • Threadpool monitoring
    • All the standard features of JBossON for the managed servers and services:
      • Discovery
      • Monitoring
      • Metric gathering and charting
      • Alerting
      • and more...

     

    Requirements

    The following is a prioritized list of features to be provided by the plugin, with current prioritization:

     

    • Minimum First Delivery (*)
      • Auto Discovery (*)
      • Basic Monitoring (*)
      • Server Control ( Start/Shutdown/Restart ) (*)
    • Critical
      • Application management
        • Control (Start/Stop/Reload) (*)
        • Content (War Deployment) (+)
        • Manual add/Delete (+)
    • Major
      • RT Monitoring (*)
      • Configuration (*)
      • Secure Tomcat management
        • password authentication (*)
        • SSL (-)
      • User management (*)
        • User Db, Users, Groups, Roles (*)
    • Other
      • Connector control (*)
      • manual add/delete of other services
      • add/delete for other services (?)

     

     

      (*)  done for 2.2

      (+) anticipated for 2.2

      (-)  out of scope for 2.2

      (?) time permitting


    Validated Versions:
    • Jopr   2.2.0.GA
    • EWS 1.0.0.GA
      • 5.5
      • 6
         
    • Apache TC
      • 5.5
      • 6
    • JDK   5,6

    Platforms:

    EWS 1.0.0.GA supports RHEL4,5 and Solaris 9.10.  Windows is not yet supported.  Apache distributions should work on supported EWS platforms as well as Windows.

     

    Support:

    The plugin will be released as part of Jopr. For support the plugin must be used with JON license and an EWS distribution of Tomcat.

     

     

    Features

    Feature details, concerns, issues, etc...

     

    Auto Discovery

    Standard process based discovery based on process list query and pattern matching.

    • May need to work with EWS team to discuss initial activation of MBeans.
    • May not be EWS specific, may generally detect standalone Tomcat processes.

     

     

    Discovery is similar to the discovery of the embedded tomcat within JBossAS. However the following needs to be taken into consideration for tomcat.

     

    • Startup / Shutdown scripts are different between EWS and Apache. EWS does not include the startup.sh / shutdown.sh scripts. Later versions of EWS are expected to have analogous structure to Apache Tomcat which would factor out the operations facets.
    • The installation directory differs from the the TC embedded plugin which defaults to (../)

     

    Deployed Applications Discovery

    Discovery of the deployed web applications within TC.

    Connectors Discovery

    Discovery of the available TC / Apache connectors (mod_jk, mod_cluster, etc...)

     

    Basic Monitoring

    Utilize the existing MBeans:

     

    • Connector
      • ThreadPool
    • Virtual Host
      • Application Caches
    • Web applications
    • Security
      • group
      • user
      • Role
      • user database

     

    Operations
    Server Operations

    Provide the following operations on the server:

    • START: Start the server instance
    • STOP: Stop the server instance
    • RESTART: Restart the server instance
    Deployed Applications(WAR) Operations

    Provide the following operations on the applications layer:

    • Stop: Deploy the application
    • Start: Undeploy the application
    • Reload: Redeploy the application

     

     

    RT Monitoring

    In the fashion of JBoss AS RT support for webapp requests.

     

    We will contact the EWS team to see whether we can get the RT filter config into the apache conf/web.xml (commented out) to ease RT config for users of RT metrics with EWS.

     

    Configuration

    Be able to configure various components such as:

    • Connectors
    • Security

     

    EMS JMX Remoting SSL

    SSL support.

     

    • Can we utilize the existing trust store on the assumption that the plugin and EWS will be utilizing the same JVM configuration?

     

     

    Other Questions

    • Which project will this plugin reside in?
      • This will be developed and released as part of the Jopr project (confirmed on 1/15/09).
    • What about the HTTPD distibution bundled with EWS?
      • Compatibility should be provided by the RHQ Apache plugin. This is not directly relevant to the Tomcat plugin.
    • Any conflicts with JMX servers if EWS started with similar property?
      • Yes, the RHQ JMX plugin picks up any process with -Djmxremote. Since we want TC processes to be managed by the TC plugin we placed a specific filter in the JMX plugin discovery. So, if you want to monitor TC you need the TC plugin, it will not be dscovered by the JMX plugin.