Today, little is known about the costs associated with the manageability of a system. This lack of knowledge has a deep impact both on the quality and the performance of managed networks and services and even the management system itself. Thus, it becomes crucial to assess this cost and better understand the performance of management systems both with common metrics and performance evaluation methodologies. Based on empirical observations and analytical results, we identify interesting performance behavior of JMX (Java Management eXtension) based-management frameworks.