JMiniX Overview

JMiniX is a lightweight tool that exposes MBeans and allows the secure browsing of said MBeans on any application and environment without heavy infrastructure setup.

Setup

1. Include the following dependence into the build system of your choice: https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.jminix/jminix/1.2.0
2. Create a JMiniX servlet in the web.xml of your application: https://gist.github.com/SCBbestof/72549e35c30d622cc037c47c8d0ea732
3. Deploy your application and access the <your-application-url>:<application-port>/jmx/ URL. Example: http://localhost:8080/jmx/

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Very lightweight. It only uses 234KB of disk space and there is no need for Jolokia.
• Easy deployment using the java project itself. Maven dependency + servlet integration and that’s it.
• Can work in clustered environments

Cons

• It is RMI-based, so it doesn’t get along with firewalls. A workaround is using HTTP Tunnelling.
• The UI is awful. You can’t even see a list of elements without copying it in a text editor.

Related articles

• JMiniX wiki: https://github.com/lbovet/jminix/wiki
• Cluster usage: https://github.com/lbovet/jminix/wiki/ClusterUsage
• RMI through firewalls via proxies: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/platform/rmi/spec/rmi-arch6.html