JVM

The JVM integration collects JVM metrics exposed through Java Management Extensions (JMX). The integration primarily collects metrics on memory and garbage collection. Additional runtime metrics, such as thread count and classes loaded, are also available.

For more information about JVM, see the JVM documentation.

Prerequisites

To collect JVM telemetry, you must install the Ops Agent:

  • For metrics, install version 2.2.0 or higher.

This integration supports JVM versions Java 16 and Java 11.

Configure your JVM instance

To expose a JMX endpoint, you must set the com.sun.management.jmxremote.port system property when starting the JVM. We also recommend setting the com.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port system property to the same port.

To expose a JMX endpoint remotely, you must also set the java.rmi.server.hostname system property.

To set system properties by using command-line arguments, prepend the property name with -D when starting the JVM.

For example, to set com.sun.management.jmxremote.port to port 9999, specify the following when starting the JVM:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9999

Configure the Ops Agent for JVM

Following the guide to Configure the Ops Agent, add the required elements to collect telemetry from JVM instances, and restart the agent.

Example configuration

The following commands create the configuration to collect and ingest telemetry for JVM and restart the Ops Agent.

set -e

# Create a back up of the existing file so existing configurations are not lost.
sudo cp /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml.bak

# Configure the Ops Agent.
sudo tee /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml > /dev/null << EOF
metrics:
  receivers:
    jvm:
      type: jvm
      endpoint: service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://127.0.0.1:9010/jmxrmi
  service:
    pipelines:
      jvm:
        receivers:
          - jvm
EOF

sudo systemctl restart google-cloud-ops-agent.service
sleep 60

Configure metrics collection

To ingest metrics from JVM, you must create a receiver for the metrics that JVM produces and then create a pipeline for the new receiver.

This receiver does not support the use of multiple instances in the configuration, for example, to monitor multiple endpoints. All such instances write to the same time series, and Cloud Monitoring has no way to distinguish among them.

To configure a receiver for your jvm metrics, specify the following fields:

Field Default Description
collection_interval 60s A time duration value, such as 30s or 5m.
endpoint localhost:9999 The JMX Service URL or host and port used to construct the service URL. This value must be in the form of service:jmx:<protocol>:<sap> or host:port. Values in host:port form are used to create a service URL of service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://<host>:<port>/jmxrmi.
password The configured password if JMX is configured to require authentication.
type This value must be jvm.
username The configured username if JMX is configured to require authentication.

What is monitored

The following table provides the list of metrics that the Ops Agent collects from the JVM instance.

Metric type 
Kind, Type
Monitored resources		 Labels
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.classes.loaded
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.gc.collections.count
CUMULATIVE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.gc.collections.elapsed
CUMULATIVE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.heap.committed
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.heap.init
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.heap.max
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.heap.used
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.nonheap.committed
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.nonheap.init
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.nonheap.max
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.nonheap.used
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.pool.committed
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.pool.init
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.pool.max
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.pool.used
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		name
workload.googleapis.com/jvm.threads.count
GAUGE, INT64
gce_instance 		 

Verify the configuration

This section describes how to verify that you correctly configured the JVM receiver. It might take one or two minutes for the Ops Agent to begin collecting telemetry.

To verify that JVM metrics are being sent to Cloud Monitoring, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Metrics explorer page:

    Go to Metrics explorer

    If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

  2. In the toolbar of the query-builder pane, select the button whose name is either  MQL or  PromQL.
  3. Verify that MQL is selected in the Language toggle. The language toggle is in the same toolbar that lets you format your query.
  4. Enter the following query in the editor, and then click Run query: 
    fetch gce_instance
| metric 'workload.googleapis.com/jvm.memory.heap.used'
| every 1m

View dashboard

To view your JVM metrics, you must have a chart or dashboard configured. The JVM integration includes one or more dashboards for you. Any dashboards are automatically installed after you configure the integration and the Ops Agent has begun collecting metric data.

You can also view static previews of dashboards without installing the integration.

To view an installed dashboard, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Dashboards page:

    Go to Dashboards

    If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

  2. Select the Dashboard List tab, and then choose the Integrations category.
  3. Click the name of the dashboard you want to view.

If you have configured an integration but the dashboard has not been installed, then check that the Ops Agent is running. When there is no metric data for a chart in the dashboard, installation of the dashboard fails. After the Ops Agent begins collecting metrics, the dashboard is installed for you.

To view a static preview of the dashboard, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Integrations page:

    Go to Integrations

    If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

  2. Click the Compute Engine deployment-platform filter.
  3. Locate the entry for JVM and click View Details.
  4. Select the Dashboards tab to see a static preview. If the dashboard is installed, then you can navigate to it by clicking View dashboard.

For more information about dashboards in Cloud Monitoring, see Dashboards and charts.

For more information about using the Integrations page, see Manage integrations.

Install alerting policies

Alerting policies instruct Cloud Monitoring to notify you when specified conditions occur. The JVM integration includes one or more alerting policies for you to use. You can view and install these alerting policies from the Integrations page in Monitoring.

To view the descriptions of available alerting policies and install them, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the  Integrations page:

    Go to Integrations

    If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

  2. Locate the entry for JVM and click View Details.
  3. Select the Alerts tab. This tab provides descriptions of available alerting policies and provides an interface for installing them.
  4. Install alerting policies. Alerting policies need to know where to send notifications that the alert has been triggered, so they require information from you for installation. To install alerting policies, do the following:
    1. From the list of available alerting policies, select those that you want to install.

    2. In the Configure notifications section, select one or more notification channels. You have the option to disable the use of notification channels, but if you do, then your alerting policies fire silently. You can check their status in Monitoring, but you receive no notifications.

      For more information about notification channels, see Manage notification channels.

    3. Click Create Policies.

For more information about alerting policies in Cloud Monitoring, see Introduction to alerting.

For more information about using the Integrations page, see Manage integrations.

What's next

For a walkthrough on how to use Ansible to install the Ops Agent, configure a third-party application, and install a sample dashboard, see the Install the Ops Agent to troubleshoot third-party applications video.