Configuring Remote Management and Monitoring on a Cassandra Node With JConsole

In your cassandra-env.sh set:

LOCAL_JMX=no

If you want username and password security, keep the default setting for JMX remote authenticate as true. Otherwise, set it to false:

JVM_OPTS="$JVM_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false"

Note: If set to true, enter a username and password for the JMX user in the jmxremote.password.file. Follow the instructions here on how to secure that file. Setting jmxremote.authenticate to true also requires you to pass in the username and password when running a nodetool command, e.g. nodetool status -u cassandra -pw cassandra

Restart the server (if needed).

Connecting to the Node Using JConsole for Monitoring

Find the JConsole jar in your JDK_HOME/bin or JDK_HOME/lib directory. If you don’t have the Java JDK installed, it can be downloaded from the Oracle Website.

Double-click the executable jar to run it (or run it from the command line). Select “Remote Process” and enter the following connection string.

 service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://<target ip address>:7199/jmxrmi

Replace <target ip address> with the address of the machine you intend to manage or monitor.

Note: JConsole may try (and fail) to connect using SSL first. If it does, it will ask if it can connect over a non-encrypted connection. You should answer this prompt in the affirmative and you are good.

Congrats! You now have everything you need to monitor and manage a Cassandra node.

For help with how to monitor Cassandra using JMX and with interpreting the metrics see:

• Monitor Cassandra Performance Metrics
• Collect Cassandra Metrics
• Using JConsole