Quick tip: Enabling remote access to Tomcat JMX

If you want to connect JConsole/VisualVM to a remote Tomcat or set up Opsview check_jmx with Tomcat, then you’ll need to enable remote JMX support.

This can be achieved with the following JVM settings in /etc/default/tomcat6 on Debian (line breaks added for clarity):

# Add JMX support
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1616
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false"

This configuration would typically be locked down with iptables.

For the complete list of settings (e.g. SSL / password controlled access) see the remote section of the JMX guide.

 From http://leanjavaengineering.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/tomcat-remote-jmx-access/