6.1
Table Of Contents
- Endpoint Operations Management Agent Plug-in Development Kit
- Contents
- About the Endpoint Operations Management Agent Plug-in Development Kit
- Introduction to Plug-in Development
- The Role of the Server and Agent in Plug-ins
- Technical Overview
- Plug-in Implementations
- Using Support Classes to Simplify a Plug-in
- Writing Plug-ins
- JMX Plug-in
- Script Plug-ins
- SNMP Plug-in
- JMX-Based Management
- Auto-Discovery of JMX Resources
- Configuration Properties for JMX Monitoring
- Creating a Custom JMX Plug-in
- Defining Service Types to Provide Management via Custom MBeans
- Defining an ObjectName to Access Custom MBeans
- Defining Configuration Properties to Appear in the User Interface
- Defining and Gathering Metrics
- Specifying the Availability Metric for MBeans
- Implementing Control Actions
- Defining the Server Auto-Inventory Element
- Discovering Custom Properties
- Running and Testing Plug-ins from the Command Line
- Using Auto-Discovery Support Classes in Plug-ins
- Working with Plug-in Descriptors
- Plug-In Support Classes
- Index
Working with Plug-in Descriptors 3
A plug-in descriptor is an XML file that defines what a plug-in does and how. It defines the object types it
manages and, for each object type, specifies the management functions it performs, the resource data it
requires and discovers, and the metrics it returns.
Every plug-in has a descriptor file. If a plug-in uses Endpoint Operations Management plug-in support
classes or a script to perform management functions, the descriptor is the component to develop and
deploy. The descriptor for a plug-in that uses custom management classes is packaged with the classes in a
JAR for deployment.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Hierarchy of Managed Object Types,” on page 47
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“Management Functions and Classes for Object Types,” on page 48
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“Inventory and Configuration Data for Object Types,” on page 48
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“Metrics to Collect for Each Object Type,” on page 48
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“Structure of a Plug-in Descriptor,” on page 48
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“Functionality of Plug-in Descriptor Elements,” on page 49
Hierarchy of Managed Object Types
A plug-in descriptor defines each object type that the plug-in manages.
In some cases there is only a single type, but more typically the descriptor defines a hierarchy of types, for
example a server object (for example, Tomcat 6.0) and its service objects (for example, Vhosts).
A plug-in can manage multiple object type hierarchies. The descriptor for such plug-ins defines an object
hierarchy for each version.
Although a plug-in can manage a platform object and one or more levels of dependent objects, in practice
virtually all platform-level objects are managed by a single Endpoint Operations Management system-plug-
in.jar plug-in. The system plug-in discovers and manages all supported OS platform objects and platform
services objects, such as the network interface, CPU, and file server mount service objects for each platform
object.
The only other Endpoint Operations Management plug-ins that manage objects that are determined by
Endpoint Operations Management to be platform objects are those that manage virtual or network hosts.
VMware, Inc.
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