The RHQ plugin system is called AMPS or Advanced Management Plugin System. Don't blame me over the name... Mazz came up with it. Anyway, why is it advanced? On the outside it seems pretty plain vanilla. You've got an XML file to define the metadata and you write some code to do the work. Pretty typical. And it may not seem all that sexy, but I do think it demonstrates some new enhancements to a field that's had some pretty tough extension models to date. Its not perfect and we have plans to enhance, tune, simplify, etc. but I'll use a couple posts to cover some of the high-level details and hopefully some of you will find it useful in building your own RHQ plugins.

read more...

Sometimes one of the most difficult things to do as a plugin developer is to bring some semblance, some order to the wide variety of features and functions that exist in software today. What may seem like a perfectly logical way to capture that information to you may seem utterly backwards to someone else. And the reason should come as no surprise - we all think about things differently.

So what's the trick to developing a single solution that is going to make everyone happy? Well, unfortunately, there isn't one. However, there are some steps that you can take to try and mitigate this mismatch of thought, and keep most satisfied in the end.

read more...

A recent chat with a colleague reminded me today how important it is to clearly distinguish between what's in your enterprise and what's in your inventory.

read more...

As your enterprise grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to individually manage the resources in your inventory.

read more...

... So what do we have to show for it? To be honest, a lot. When I have to look back and work with our 1.4 release I feel cramped with its relative lack of features. Features aside, the entire 2.0 package feels considerably smoother, faster, and just plain cooler. ...

Read More...

I have a written a three part series on how to write a simple RHQ plugin.

As an example scenario the plugin will try to reach a http server, see if the base URL is available and return the status code + the time it took to reach it.

Part one talks about the structure of RHQ itself
Part two introduces the involved components
and
Part three shows the package structure and the code.

The Stuttgart SIG-JBoss will hold a meeting on June 26th in the premises of Red Hat Germany.

Topic for this meeting is a presentation of RHQ – and if we have time about how to write plugins.

You can view the full announcement at the Stuttgart Java User Group page

Please register as indicated in the announcement page – registration is free!

I finally got a chance to checkin a couple more plugins that I had been working on. The virt plugin uses libvirt to do a bit of xen monitoring and management.

...

Read More...