I have a headless Java application, running on a remote server as a daemon-style process.
I want to extract Java level profiling information from the process, of the sort displayed by JVisualVM. For example, it should show method invocation times and so on.
What is the best way of doing this? My understanding is that JVisualVM does not profile when connecting remotely.
Ideally, the profiling information would be stored in a file for later inspection, in a manner similar to Java heap generation (with jmap) and later analysis (with a heap inspector).
You can use NetBeans profiler remote profiling capability.
In fact, VisualVM is based on it.
Here is a detailed blog post about Profiling a Java remote server using Netbeans.