Visual VM is a new troubleshooting tool. It is currently an open source java.net project:
[https://visualvm.dev.java.net/]
VisualVM is built on the NetBeans framework. It contains all the functionality of JConsole plus a lot more. It uses the NetBeans plugin architecture so that you can write your own plugins for it. There is also a plugin repository from which you can download plugins that others have contributed.
VVM was demo'd at the start of James Gosling's Friday keynote session at JavaOne 2008. James called it 'The most useful thing you will see today'. He's right. The
demos
of the Java Rea-Time System sorting colored balls, and Tommy the robot car are cool, but VVM is way more useful :-)
You can watch the VVM demo here:
[http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/media_shell.jsp?id=FRdamp267672]
You can find other videos of JavaOne keynote sessions here:
[http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/sessions/general/index.jsp]