1.2. About JBoss ON Servers

JBoss ON is built around a central server. The server performs two vital functions:

The JBoss ON server is the central location for administrators to manage an operating environment. The server is used to set baseline configuration and provision applications, to define alerts and notifications, and to initiate operations. As agents send information back to the server from the resource, then the server can also perform monitoring tasks (by providing metrics and reporting) and can also respond to events by sending alerts or launching operations.

The data used by the JBoss ON server is stored in a backend SQL database. These data include:

The JBoss ON server hosts the graphical user interface which is used to interact with JBoss ON.

One very important aspect of JBoss ON servers is this: they only communicate with the backend database and the JBoss ON agent. As long as JBoss ON servers use the same backend database, they are automatically included in a server cloud that allows for failover and scalability, without additional configuration in the servers or the database. JBoss ON agents can be configured to use a list of preferred JBoss ON servers, which naturally distributes the agent load among the servers and provides agent-server failover without detailed configuration.