So at least with Java 1.6 the JVM can use SOCKS for proxying RMI requests, so to get the wonderful jvisualvm (think 1.5 visualGC) working use the following incantations.

This requires the initial RMI registry port is open to the client.

First the initial SSH to server enabling the SOCKS tunnel

$ ssh -D localhost:9696 servername


And now for jvisualvm
jvisualvm -J-Dnetbeans.system_socks_proxy=localhost:9696 -J-Djava.net.useSystemProxies=true

props to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1609961/visualvm-over-ssh for the hints