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Thursday May 28, 2009

First Glance At JBoss 5.1 GA Admin Console - And Glassfish v2.1 Comparison

JBoss 5.1.0 GA comes with a visual administration console, which seems to be based on JSF 1.2 with RichFaces and Seam. You can reach the console under the following URL: http://localhost:8080/admin-console/. User name and password are both admin (unlike Glassfish, where the password is adminadmin :-)). JBoss 5.1.0 installation was very smooth: download, extract and start.

First impressions:

The admin console looks nice and clean
The most important resources like JDBC / JMS / EJB 2 and 3 applications are accessible.
You can start and stop services applications and modules (ejb-jars) directly from the admin console

Basic metrics for application server, resources and applications are available:

VM Free Memory	101.6MB	The amount of free memory for the JVM this app server instance is running on
JVM Max Memory	490.7MB	The amount of max memory for the JVM this app server instance is running on
JVM Total Memory	490.7MB	The amount of total memory for the JVM this app server instance is running on
Total Transactions	0	Total number of transactions since last restart
Transactions Committed	0	Number of transactions commited since last restart
Transactions Rolledback	0	Number of transactions commited since last restart

The administration console is fast and responsive.
I tried, however, to create a new JMS destination via the console and got the following error (will have to investigate the cause):
Failed to add Resource (see app server log for additional details): java.lang.RuntimeException:Failed to process template. -> java.lang.RuntimeException:java.io.FileNotFoundException: /Users/abien/work/servers/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/deploy/jms/hugo-service.xml (No such file or directory) -> java.io.FileNotFoundException:/Users/abien/work/servers/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/deploy/jms/hugo-service.xml (No such file or directory)

Comparing JBoss 5.1.0 to Glassfish v2.1 isn't really fair, GF is available with a visual console from the beginning, so it is really well integrated:

GF help system and documentation is really well integrated into the console.
With GF v2 you can easily manage your JVM settings.
Callflow (a tree-like monitoring preview) is useful for monitoring, the other metrics are also finer.
You can access and filter log files directly from the console.
Custom JMX-monitoring can be directly configured from the admin console.
You can setup a cluster directly from the console.
The synergy between the domain.xml (configuration file), the command line interface asadmin (could be considered as a configuration DSL) and the visual console is unique (I'm planning to demos some features at the CommunityOne West)
[...]

JBoss 5.1.0 is on the right track. The current admin-console is lot better, than the <5.1 alternatives (jmx-console, web-console), which even were not password protected. I hope JBoss-guys will keep improving the admin-console, then Glassfish v3 will get a really serious competitor :-).

I'm really curious about the interoperability - will try to deploy some Java EE 5 applications from GF v2 to JBoss 5.1.0.

Posted at 10:29AM May 28, 2009 by Adam Bien in Productive Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices | Kommentare[14]

[my tweets] Rss My book: Real World Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices

Kommentare:

Hi Adam,

Do you think, that an admin console is really necessary?

To define JDBC, JMS etc. the XML files are really simple to configure and you can put them under version control.
And for monitoring in real enterprise environment the system admins uses their own monitoring tool like SiteScope or Nagios.

Greetings from Switzerland
Simon

Gesendet von Simon Martinelli am May 28, 2009 at 12:10 PM CEST #

@Simon,

I think it is very necessary for mid-range companies. It isn't necessary for developers or high-end operations.

I had always hard times in the past (4.0 days) to introduce JBoss, because of the "XML hell" and jmx-console.

thanks for your comment!.

adam

Gesendet von Adam Bien am May 28, 2009 at 12:17 PM CEST #

Ok. I see ;-)

Before JBoss I used WebSphere for a very long time. And the switch from AdminConsole to XML was hard.

But once you know what you are doing in the "XML Hell" it's much faster.

Btw our WebSphere guys rarely used the AdminConsole. The created some JACL scripts for administration.

But you are right, if you are not familiar with the app server it's sometimes better to have an admin console.

You are right that web-console and jmx-console are not password protected after installation but you can make them protected by uncommenting the security-constraint in the corresponding web.xml. But I can't tell you why it isn't configured protected by default...

Gesendet von Simon Martinelli am May 28, 2009 at 01:45 PM CEST #

A small correction - the Admin Console uses JSF RI 1.2, not 2.0. Besides Seam, it also makes use of RichFaces.

Gesendet von Ian Springer am May 28, 2009 at 01:53 PM CEST #

Adam, thanks for the feedback; and yes the Embedded Console will continue to improve - this is just the first cut.

Note the Embedded Console is a small subset of the features available in JON (JBoss Operations Network) - for large complex deployments of multiple JBoss products - that's what we expect people to use.

Rich
JBoss, a division of Red Hat

Gesendet von Rich Sharples am May 28, 2009 at 02:08 PM CEST #

@Rich,

and JON is available separately?

thanks!,

adam

Gesendet von Adam Bien am May 28, 2009 at 02:29 PM CEST #

@Ian,

I saw the output "mojarra" in the logs during the boot of the admin console and assumed it is based on this. Will correct that - thanks!,

adam

Gesendet von Adam Bien am May 28, 2009 at 02:30 PM CEST #

@Simon, I wouldn't put the the GlassFish domain.xml under version control. I'd create a script that calls asadmin as Arun demonstrates: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/arungupta/archive/2009/04/glassfish_asadm_1.html.

The approach above will be more immune to domain.xml changes across releases. For example, we may add info for new features between releases. Version controlling the script will still allow you to configure GlassFish to your needs while incorporating domain.xml product modifications.

John Clingan
GlassFish Group Product Manager

Gesendet von John Clingan am May 28, 2009 at 07:10 PM CEST #

Regarding the exception you are seeing in step 6) I think you are running into https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS-6758, i.e. a problem creating resources with global jndi names. Please add to that jira the jndi name you used when creating the queue and we will try to get this issue addressed.

Cheers
Charles
JBoss, a division of Red Hat

Gesendet von Charles Crouch am May 28, 2009 at 10:13 PM CEST #

@Adam, yes JON is a separate subscription - the upstream is the Jopr project.

Jopr : http://www.jboss.org/jopr/

JON : http://www.jboss.com/products/jbosson/

- Rich
JBoss, a Division of Red Hat

Gesendet von Rich Sharples am May 29, 2009 at 07:03 PM CEST #

>I think it is very necessary for mid-range companies.
Most correct.
>It isn't necessary for developers or high-end operations.
Spot on. :)

Gesendet von Wesslan am June 26, 2009 at 01:22 PM CEST #

Any results after the interoperability test?

Gesendet von Justin am August 04, 2009 at 09:02 PM CEST #

Hi Adam,