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SNMP is amazing! It is a de-facto standard for real-time enterprise system monitoring. Basics of SNMP can be looked up in Wikipedia . Please get the basic before continuing.

There are several simple Java packages out there that we tried. No JNI code is required - it is all Java! To use SNMP from Java you can use:

• joeSNMP now at SourceForge
• SNMP Inquisitor http://edge.mcs.drexel.edu/GICL/people/sevy/snmp/

Several RFC's exists that define standard objects to be monitored inside software, operating systems, and hardware. The standard tree is quite large and can be accessed at variety of places including MIB Depot . Just go to search page and search for vendor you are interested in.

All major software and hardware vendors support SNMP in some form. Vendors support custom hierarchies in addition to standard one. Standard hierarchy can be used to get basic monitoring info, but custom hierarchies are needed for in depth monitoring. Each vendor defines performance in its own way of course...

Microsoft support was very good at the time when one could access any of the Windows performance counters after exporting them with perf2mib.exe tool. But this does officially work now in Windows 2000 onwards. Basic SNMP support is still present in Windows, nothing fancy thought. We are into SNMP to be able to monitor one of our switch/router/firewalls. It claims full SNMP support and we want to get handle on it from our Java apps.

If you never used SNMP before, it might be difficult for you to start. The best thing is to buy a tool. If you can't afford a tool, you need to figure out how to work with MIB's and OID's directly. Assuming it's clear, you have to formulate performance monitoring strategy.