Patent ID: 7493624

Claim:
A monitoring system comprising: a cluster of multiple application server instances wherein each said application server instance includes a plurality of server nodes, and a central services instance communicatively coupled to said plurality of server nodes on a multi-tiered network, wherein at least one of the server nodes is dedicated for presentation logic and at least one of the other server nodes is dedicated for business logic wherein the presentation logic and business logic are logically separated from a user application instance executing on a client, the application server instances to serve applications over the multi-tiered network to a plurality of clients, wherein the central services instance is to provide messaging and synchronization services between the server nodes in the cluster; a central database in the central services instance storing program code and configuration information for the application server instances; a plurality of MBean servers assigned to the plurality of server nodes; a plurality of runtime MBeans associated with specified resources on each of the plurality of server nodes and registered with one of the MBean servers, each of the runtime MBeans collecting and reporting monitoring data for its associated resource; and cluster integration logic in the central services instance, the cluster integration logic including a plurality of monitor MBeans arranged in a hierarchical tree structure, each of the monitor MBeans associated with at least one of the runtime MBeans, each of the monitor MBeans to receive resource data from its associated runtime MBean, the cluster integration logic to compile the resource data collected from each of the individual runtime MBeans via the MBean servers throughout the cluster and to provide the compiled resource data in a predefined organizational structure to a management interface to provide a unified view of the managed resources in the cluster to an administrator, the predefined organizational structure being a monitor tree representing a hierarchical relationship between each of the resources monitored by each of the MBeans.