Monitoring

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Available monitoring beans
JSON REST API
Nagios integration
- Examples
- Running Nagios on a different server
Frontend server monitoring URL

Available monitoring beans

For monitoring the current status of the server, Xima® Formcycle provides a monitoring bean for each server type. It can be accessed and read via JMX by using tools such as for example JConsole.

The beans are registered under the following names:

Frontend-Server: de.xima.fc:type=FSMonitor,qualifier=<contextName>
Master-Server: de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=<contextName>

The context name is the context name of the applications. It is necessary for supporting parallel installations of Xima® Formcycle on a server. By default, the context name is the name of Xima® Formcycle's WAR file, but it can be changed by modifying the context name parameter XFC_CONTEXT_NAME within the web.xml.

When starting the server, the current context name is logged. You may need to modify the logging settings to see the name. There are different monitoring attributes available for each bean, which are listed below.

Key	Description	Possible options
running	Whether the master server has been started successfully.	true, false
db_connected	Whether the master server could establish a connection to the database.	true, false
fs_connected	A map of the names of all frontend servers and whether they are connected to this master server	<serverName> : true, false
fs_active	A map of the names of all frontend servers and whether this master server should attempt to establish a connection to that server automatically.	<serverName> : true, false
fs_status	A map of the names of all frontend servers and the connection status of that server.	<serverName> : CONNECTED, NOT_CONNECTED, ERROR, RECONNECTING, DISCONNECTING , CONNECTING, AUTHENTICATING, WAIT_FOR_CONNECTION
fs_disconnected_count	The number of frontend servers not connected to this master server	A non-negative number.
fs_connected_count	The number of frontend servers connected to this master server	A non-negative number.
failed_login_count	For each login name, the login cache contains how many times a user made a failed login attempt with that login name. This is the number of login names in that cache.	A non-negative number.

Key	Description	Possible options
running	Whether the frontend server has been started successfully.	true, false
connected	Whether this frontend server is connected to a master server.	true, false
failed_login_count	For each login name, the login cache contains how many times a user made a failed login attempt with that login name. This is the number of login names in that cache.	A non-negative number.
status	The connection status of this frontend server.	CONNECTED, NOT_CONNECTED, ERROR, RECONNECTING, DISCONNECTING, CONNECTING, AUTHENTICATING, WAIT_FOR_CONNECTION

JSON REST API

The JSON interface has been removed since version 6.0.0 in favor of a separate Jolokia installation. The beans used for monitoring are still available. The JSON interface of the monitoring allowed read-only access and could only be called via the application server (localhost/127.0.0.1). If this is wanted, the access would have to be configured within the Jolokia application, more information can be found here.

A possible call, after installation of Jolokia, looks like the following:

http://localhost/jolokia/read/de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=formcycle

JSON response:

{
"request": {
   "mbean": "de.xima.fc:qualifier=formcycle,type=MSMonitor",
   "type": "read"
  },
"value": {
   "running": true,
   "failed_login_count": 0,
   "fs_active": {
     "localhost": true
    },
   "db_connected": true,
   "fs_connected_count": 1,
   "fs_connected": {
     "localhost": true
    },
   "fs_disconnected_count": 0,
   "fs_status": {
     "localhost": "CONNECTED"
    }
  },
"timestamp": 1579186291,
"status": 200
}

More information about the integration of the framework Jolokia and a more detailed documentation can be found here.

Nagios integration

The Nagios monitoring application may be used for reading and showing monitoring info as well by using the JSON REST API described above. This requires the Nagios plugin jmx4perl to be installed. A detailed installation instruction can be found on their website. This allows querying the JSON REST API with the corresponding commands.

Examples

These examples assume that Nagios is installed on the the same server as the Xima® Formcycle application(s).

Command

define command{
command_name check_jmx4perl
command_line check_jmx4perl --url $ARG1$ --mbean $ARG2$ --attribute $ARG3$ $ARG4$
}

Service definitions

Querying the number of frontend server not connected to this master server. When there are any disconnected servers, a warning will be displayed. When there is more than one disconnected server, Nagios will treat this warning as critical.

define service{
use                  generic-service
host_name            localhost
service_description MS:FS-connected-count
check_command        check_jmx4perl!http://localhost/formcycle/monitoring/!de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=formcycle!fs_disconnected_count!--warning 1 --critical 2
}

Querying the database connection status of the master server

define service{
use                  generic-service
host_name            localhost
service_description MS:DB-connected
check_command        check_jmx4perl!http://localhost/formcycle/monitoring/!de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=formcycle!db_connected!--string --critical 'false'
}

Querying whether the frontend server localhost is connected to the master server

define service{
use                  generic-service
host_name            localhost
service_description MS:FS-localhost
check_command        check_jmx4perl!http://localhost/formcycle/monitoring/!de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=formcycle!fs_connected!--path=localhost --string --critical 'false'
}

Querying the frontend server whether it is connected to a master server

define service{
use                  generic-service
host_name            localhost
service_description FS:connected
check_command        check_jmx4perl!http://localhost/frontend-server/monitoring/!de.xima.fc:type=FSMonitor,qualifier=frontend-server!connected!--string --critical 'false'
}

Running Nagios on a different server

For security concerns, the JSON REST API does not allow querying the monitoring info from other IP addresses, only from the local server. Running Nagios on a different server and querying the monitoring info is still possible, but requires some additional setup.

One option is to setup the routing accordingly or using a proxy.

Another options for using Nagios on a different server is by providing certain options to the monitoring servlet. The parameter policyLocation provides the servlet with the URL to a Jolokia policy file, which will be passed on to Jolokia. The monitoring servlet is an extends Jolokia standard servlet and all Jolokia-specific parameters can be used. A list of relevant parameters can be found website.

A third option is running Jolokia in parallel to Xima® Formcycle or the frontend server. Jolokia provides an application with a Java-EE agent for this purpose, documentation and download).

This agent does not possess any restrictions for read operations or control commands. However, as this represents a potential security issue, we strongly recommend to configure this agent for the server and network settings in use and restrict access as much as possible. For example, access should be restricted to the server running the Nagios application.

Jolokia provides more details on security-related options in their documentation.

When Jolokia is run parallel to Xima® Formcycle, the connection to the frontend server localhost must be modified as follows:

define service{
use                  generic-service
host_name            fc-test
service_description MS:FS-localhost
check_command        check_jmx4perl!http://fc-test/jolokia/!de.xima.fc:type=MSMonitor,qualifier=formcycle!fs_connected!--path=localhost --string --critical 'false'
}

Frontend server monitoring URL

7.1.0+ This feature is available since Xima® Formcycle version 7.1.

You can also use the following URL to monitor the status of the frontend server (available only on the master server):

https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection

Due to security concerns, this URL is disabled by default. To enable it, you need to configure the application properties monitoring.enabled and monitoring.allowed.hosts according to your needs.

For example, when the Xima® Formcycle server can be reached via the domain demo.company.org via the context formcycle, the URL becomes https://demo.company.org/formcycle/monitor/fs/connection//.

To identify the frontend server, you must either specify the name of the system frontend server via the parameter name, or its internal database ID via the parameter id:

https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection?name=MyFrontendServer
https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection?id=5963

Then you can make use of the following monitoring options:

https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection?name=<Name>

Checks whether the given frontend server is connected to the master server. Returns the HTTP status code 200 if connected, and 500 otherwise.

https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection?name=<Name>&action=connect

Attempts to establish a connection to the given frontend server. When the frontend server is already connected to the master server, no action is taken. Returns the HTTP status code 200 if the frontend server was already connected to the master or when the connection could be established successfully. Otherwise, returns the status code 500 when the connection could not be established.

https://<domain>/<context>/monitor/fs/connection?name=<Name>&action=connect&force=true

Attempts to establish a connection to the given frontend server. When the frontend server is already connected to the master server, cuts the connection and attempts to reconnect to the frontend server. Returns the HTTP status code 200 when the connection could be estabslished successfully, and 500 when the connection could not be established.