How to access JMX interface in docker from outside?

For completeness, the following solution worked. The JVM should be run with specific parameters established to enable remote docker JMX monitoring were as followed:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=<PORT>
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=<PORT>
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=<IP>

where:

<IP> is the IP address of the host that where you executed 'docker run'
<PORT> is the port that must be published from docker where the JVM's JMX port is configured (docker run --publish 7203:7203, for example where PORT is 7203). Both `port` and `rmi.port` can be the same. 

Once this is done you should be able to execute JMX monitoring (jmxtrans, node-jmx, jconsole, etc) from either a local or remote machine.

Thanks to @Chris-Heald for making this a really quick and simple fix!

For dev environment you can set java.rmi.server.hostname to the catch-all IP address 0.0.0.0

Example:

 -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=0.0.0.0 \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=${JMX_PORT} \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=${JMX_PORT} \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false \
                -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false

I found it that trying to set up JMX over RMI is a pain, especially because of the -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=<IP> which you have to specify on startup. We're running our docker images in Kubernetes where everything is dynamic.

I ended up using JMXMP instead of RMI, as this only need one TCP port open, and no hostname.

My current project uses Spring, which can be configured by adding this:

<bean id="serverConnector"
    class="org.springframework.jmx.support.ConnectorServerFactoryBean"/>

(Outside Spring you need to set up your own JMXConncetorServer in order to make this work)

Along with this dependency (since JMXMP is an optional extension and not a part of the JDK):

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.main.external</groupId>
    <artifactId>jmxremote_optional-repackaged</artifactId>
    <version>4.1.1</version>
</dependency>

And you need to add the same jar your your classpath when starting JVisualVM in order to connect over JMXMP:

jvisualvm -cp "$JAVA_HOME/lib/tools.jar:<your_path>/jmxremote_optional-repackaged-4.1.1.jar"

Then connect with the following connection string:

service:jmx:jmxmp://<url:port>

(Default port is 9875)

After digging around for quite a lot, I found this configuration

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false 
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1098
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.rmi.port=1098
-Djava.rmi.server.hostname=localhost
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false

The difference with the other above is that java.rmi.server.hostname is set to localhost instead of 0.0.0.0