This document discusses Alfresco Support Admin Tools, which provides a set of tools to help diagnose, monitor, and analyze Alfresco systems. It includes features like live graphs of memory and CPU usage, checking active sessions and users, identifying hot threads, taking thread dumps, setting log levels, and profiling thread usage. The tools are packaged as AMPs that can be installed into Alfresco and provide an interface through the Admin Console. They rely on accessing systems through JMX and do not require additional specialist tools, helping both solo administrators and larger teams troubleshoot systems.

1. #AlfrescoDayParis

2. Alfresco Support Admin Tools
Antonio Soler
Premier Advance Support Engineer EMEA

3. Agenda:
● Overview
● Dependencies
● Features
● Use Cases

4. OVERVIEW
Presentation
● Alfresco is not an easily maintained application. It requires external tools to
diagnose, monitor and analyse problems or fine tune configuration specific to
the user case. For example, jstack, jVisualVM , Yourkit, etc.
04/FEB/2016

5. OVERVIEW
In mid-size companies the system administration tasks are run by a one-man band

6. OVERVIEW
In larger enterprises problem investigation or configuration of a system feature (e.g.
LDAP sync) involves several people from different teams: Alfresco admin, sysAdmin,
DBAdmin, Developer, network admin, DevOps, project Manager … this can comprise 4
or 5 people ...

7. Troubleshooting a problem
•One-man band:
• Knows a little about everything
• Alfresco is not his sole
responsibility
• Not a specialist or has access to
specialist tools.
• Alfresco support may need to train
the admin how to use a specialist
tool
DevOps Team:
• Not all available when required
• Alfresco is not the only
responsibility
• A simple task such as putting a
class in DEBUG may require an
internal change process
• Internal security policies may inhibit
diagnostic steps, such as accessing
the DB or LDAP-AD

8. Dependencies
Traditionally control of a JVM is made through the JMX (Java Management Extension)
which gives access to the Management Beans (MBeans) and the monitoring parameters
of the JVM.
Note: JMX is only available in the Enterprise Edition of Alfresco
Starting with version Alfresco 4.2.0 the JMX objects are exposed through the JavaScript
API.

9. Dependencies
● Support Tools depends on the Admin Console provided from version 4.2
Enterprise onwards
● Sample URL http://127.0.0.1:8080/alfresco/s/enterprise/admin/

10. Dependencies
● Live graphs use the CANVAS browser object which is unavailable on some old
browsers:
Internet
Explorer
Firefox
Safari
(Desktop)
Chrome
Opera
(Desktop)
Safari
(Mobile)
Opera
(Mobile)
Android
Browser
6.0 2.0 - 6.0 3.1 - 3.2 4.0 - 13.0 9.0 - 11.0 3.2 10.0 2.0
7.0 7.0 4.0 14.0 11.1 4.0 11.0 2.1
8.0 8.0 5.0 15.0 11.5 4.2 - 4.3 11.1 2.3,3.0
9.0 9.0 5.1 16.0 11.6 5.0 11.5 4.0
● This is the library used: http://smoothiecharts.org/

11. Features
System Performance
• Live graph of the Memory
and CPU usage
• The graph uses a
recursive call to refresh
data every 2 seconds
• Llightweight webscript
that will execute a JMX
bean operation (minimal
impact)
• Timescale is configurable
by the user

12. Features
Active Sessions
Checks your db pool usage and
allows you to check active
usernames.
This actually traces sys activity on db
side and the current list of
logged users
● You can click on one of the
usernames to see more
details
● You can invalidate the
session ticket of one user to
force a logoff

13. Features
HOT THREADS
Based on the famous
HotThread tool written
in Java
The script calculates the
CPU during 5 seconds
and displays the stack
trace of the 5 busiest
threads.
● You can generate
reports, save them and
send them to support

14. Features
Thread dump
To troubleshoot
performance problems
and deadlocks
You can generate as many as
you need and navigate
through them to
compare. Save all and
study later (this may not
work on IE8 due the
functions used to save,
copy and paste then
manually).
The output is formatted to
resemble a Jstack

15. Features
Log Settings
A live class can be set
easily to debug, tailed
in system log remotely
with a nice UI and with
only 2 clicks.

16. Features
THREAD SAMPLER
allows you to see what
each thread on the
system is doing, every 5
seconds
threads are coloured
depending on their
status
clicking on one of them
displays the stacktrace.
Threadumps can be
saved in json format to
send to a support ticket
or loaded later using
the same page to
analyze them.

17. Features
Apart from that there are 4 little tools that could be helpful on some cases
- JMX Settings on the DB
To find which beans have values overridden from the DB and revert them to the values
on the properties files, use with care
- Test Transformation
Transformation settings and test transformation
- Thread Profiler
Provides a live summary of each thread’s memory and CPU usage
- Scheduled Jobs
Lists and interprets the CRON jobs defined internally in Alfresco. Also shows the last
execution time.

18. Contents:
● Acknowledgments
Special thanks to:
Mike Farman for his support on this project and parts of the code.
Marco Mancuso for his help on the development and adapting it to Maven
standards.
Rich McKnight for his code to access the persisted Mbeans on the DB.
Jamie Allison for his code review, polish and improvements.
Will Abson for his useful advice.
The Smoothie Charts creators: http:smoothiecharts.org/ the library from which
was quite useful and fun to use

19. 
1.Source code on Github:
Copy from support-tools-1.x from
github.com – Alfresco Support Tools to
/alfresco/amps
2.Use ./bin/apply_amps or ./bin/alfresco-
mmt.jar to install into alfresco.jar
3.Remove .tomat/tmp ./tomcat/work,
.webapps/alfresco
4.Restart alfresco
Thanks for watching...

20. Merci !
Gerald Cussen – gerald.cussen@alfresco.com
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