I use the Event Service and its RMIPushEventRelay that is given SSL socket factories.
However, the JMX server miss a trust store and the JMX client miss a key store.
As a consequence when the server side tries to push notifications the SSL handshake fails.
The issue is that until you activate the debugging and read a FINEST message and stack as below, you've no idea of what's wrong and the client has no way to be notified programmatically. Isn't it possible to get something better ?

FINER: Waiting with timeout: 119998 ms remaining
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM RMIConnectionImpl invoke
FINEST: connectionId=rmi://129.157.209.36 2 unwrapping params with MBean extended ClassLoader.
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.interceptor.NamespaceDispatchInterceptor getInterceptorOrNullFor
FINER: dispatching to local name space
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DomainDispatchInterceptor getInterceptorOrNullFor
FINER: dispatching to local namespace: SQE
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.Repository retrieve
FINER: name = SQE:type=Basic
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM RMIConnectionImpl invoke
FINEST: connectionId=rmi://129.157.209.36 2, name=SQE:type=Basic, operationName=sendNotification, params=[sqe.notification.a.type], signature=[java.lang.String]
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin reqIncoming
FINER: Receive a new request.
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.interceptor.NamespaceDispatchInterceptor getInterceptorOrNullFor
FINER: dispatching to local name space
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DomainDispatchInterceptor getInterceptorOrNullFor
FINER: dispatching to local namespace: SQE
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.Repository retrieve
FINER: name = SQE:type=Basic
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM EventClientDelegate checkListenerPermission
FINER:
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM RMIEventForwarder forward
FINER: to the listener: 0
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin reqIncoming
FINER: Finish a request.
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin synchro
FINER: Admin: Timestamp=1228490459525
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin synchro
FINER: Admin: elapsed=1
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin synchro
FINER: Admin: remaining timeout=119999
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM ServerCommunicatorAdmin Timeout-run
FINER: Waiting with timeout: 119999 ms remaining
Dec 5, 2008 4:20:59 PM RMIEventForwarder SendingJob-task
FINEST: Got exception to forward notifs.
java.rmi.ConnectIOException: error during JRMP connection establishment; nested exception is:
javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPChannel.createConnection(TCPChannel.java:304)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPChannel.newConnection(TCPChannel.java:202)
at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(UnicastRef.java:128)
at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invokeRemoteMethod(RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.java:195)
at java.rmi.server.RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.invoke(RemoteObjectInvocationHandler.java:149)
at $Proxy7.receive(Unknown Source)
at javax.management.event.RMIPushEventForwarder$SendingJob.task(RMIPushEventForwarder.java:144)
at com.sun.jmx.event.RepeatedSingletonJob.run(RepeatedSingletonJob.java:73)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:713)
Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure
at sun.security.ssl.Alerts.getSSLException(Alerts.java:192)
at sun.security.ssl.Alerts.getSSLException(Alerts.java:154)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.recvAlert(SSLSocketImpl.java:1693)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:951)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.performInitialHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1131)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.writeRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:642)
at sun.security.ssl.AppOutputStream.write(AppOutputStream.java:78)
at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.flushBuffer(BufferedOutputStream.java:82)
at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.flush(BufferedOutputStream.java:140)
at java.io.DataOutputStream.flush(DataOutputStream.java:123)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPChannel.createConnection(TCPChannel.java:229)
... 10 more