Enabling CFMX Metrics Reporting and Service Debugging

*** Updated 2/28/03 to change filename reference from jrun-web.xml to jrun.xml. Thanks to Rob Rusher for pointing it out. Originally posted 11/17/02 ***

Interested in logging how many threads are running within CFMX, or how many sessions, or how much memory (in KBs) is being used? There is a set of logging information that you can enable (it's disabled by default) so that it's written to the default-event.log file in CFusionMX\runtime\logs. To enable it, change jrun.xml in CFusionMX\runtime\servers\default\SERVER-INF, setting the <service class="jrunx.logger.LoggerService" name="LoggerService"> element's:

  <attribute name="metricsEnabled">false</attribute>

to true. Another setting next to is is:

  <attribute name="debugEnabled">false</attribute>

Setting that to true will add new lines to that log file, indicating (with a prefix of "debug") major events that happen in the establishment of the CFMX environment.

Of course, you want to think twice about enabling this sort of metric/debug reporting in production, as it will add some overhead. Still, it can be informative.

In the case of the metric logging, you will see that there are other lines that follow these in the jrun.xml that control the reporting frequency and details. You can learn more about these settings not in the CFMX docs but instead in the JRun docs, in particular the JRun Administrator's Guide, Chapter 7 on Connection Monitoring, available online at livedocs.macromedia.com, specifically at http://livedocs.macromedia.com/jrun4docs/JRun_Administrators_Guide/netmon2.jsp#1096147.

You'll learn there the various variables you can monitor about the CFMX server as a whole (memory and session tracking) as well as web server connection status (such as idle, busy, listening threads, and more). Unfortunately, while the mechanism for monitoring such threads with an external web server connection (like IIS or Apache) work as explained, doing the same for the built-in web server (saying to use the web. prefix for the listed variables) does not work in CFMX.

I'd welcome any insights from anyone in or out of MM with more info.