Question

There are Database Administrators (DBA) and Unix|Windows System Administrators. There are likely soon to be Cloud Administrators.

There are hordes of “administrators” who are tasked with administering and managing numerous large-system JVMs running on/in various stacks, yet I’ve honestly met very few of them who have any real understanding of what a JVM is, monitoring it, instrumenting, measuring, & tuning. Do large organizations hire Windows administrators who are responsible for managing their Oracle instances? yet businesses and the public sector the world over expect system admins to manage JVMs with the same opacity.

Is there a valid operational role of a Java Runtime Administrator?

Answer 1

The J2EE platform “officially” defines a System Administrator role in the platform roles:

A System Administrator is responsible
for the configuration and
administration of an enterprise’s
computing and networking
infrastructure. A System Administrator
is also responsible for overseeing the
runtime well-being of the deployed
J2EE applications. The System
Administrator typically uses runtime
monitoring and management tools
provided by the J2EE Product Provider
to accomplish these tasks.

That said, there are discrepancies between theory and reality.