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The agent level defines the requirements for implementing agents. Agents are responsible for controlling and exposing the managed resources that are registered with the agent. By default, management agents are located on the same hosts as their resources. This collocation is not a requirement.
The agent requirements make use of the instrumentation level to define a standard MBeanServer management agent, supporting services, and a communications connector. JBoss provides both an html adaptor as well as an RMI adaptor.
The JMX agent can be located in the hardware that hosts the JMX manageable resources when a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is available. This is how the JBoss server uses the MBeanServer. A JMX agent does not need to know which resources it will serve. JMX manageable resources may use any JMX agent that offers the services it requires.
Managers interact with an agent's MBeans through a protocol adaptor or connector, as described in the Section 3.1.3, “Distributed Services Level” in the next section. The agent does not need to know anything about the connectors or management applications that interact with the agent and its MBeans.