The Java Management Extensions (JMX) framework is a Java technology that includes tools for managing and monitoring applications, system objects, and service-oriented networks. The JMX framework is designed to simplify the management of local and remote Java applications. The JMX framework introduces the concept of MBeans for real-time management of applications, whereby resources are represented by objects called MBeans (Managed Beans).

Configuration Management and Change Tracking are well known key tenets of project management. Change tracking and controlled change ensure that there is a record of the state of a system and if issues arise the cause can be linked to effects. In this blog, I will use a real-world example to demonstrate the importance of configuration and change tracking when it comes to IT observability.

SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. It is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Figure 1: How SNMP works SNMP exposes management data in the form of variables on the managed systems organized in a management information base (MIB), which describe the system status and configuration.