AppDynamics
AppDynamics is a performance management program for applications. It helps users to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of technical difficulties on business goals, allowing IT teams to prioritize their efforts in a way that improves ROI.
Scope of Support
Currently, Nobl9 does not support metric paths that contain Wild Cards | AppDynamics Documentation.
Prerequisites
The Nobl9 Agent has a firewall access to :
http://<controller_host>:<controller_port>/controller/rest/<REST_URI>
.To connect to AppDynamics, your AppDynamics API client needs at least the
Applications and Dashboards Viewer
permissions.
Authentication
Nobl9 Agent calls the Metric and Snapshot API | AppDynamics Documentation. The Agent and Direct configurations for AppDynamics require the following credentials:
Client Name: To retrieve
apiClientName
, log in to your AppDynamics account, go to Administration (under cog icon) / API Clients tab, select an API client and copyClient Name
.Account Name: To retrieve your
accountName
, log in to your AppDynamics account, go to the License (under cog icon) / License Summary / Account Details section and copy theName
.Controller URL: It is an entry point for Nobl9 to AppDynamics instance. Example:
http://yourcompany.saas.appdynamics.com
Client Secret: Follow the instructions in the API Clients | AppDynamics Documentation section of the AppDynamics documentation to create your Client Secret.
Adding AppDynamics as a Data Source in the UI
To add AppDynamics as a data source in Nobl9 using the Agent or Direct connection method, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Integrations > Sources.
- Click the
button.
- Click the relevant Source icon.
- Choose a relevant connection method (Agent or Direct), then configure the source as described below.
AppDynamics Direct
Direct Configuration in the UI
Direct connection to AppDynamics requires users to enter their credentials which Nobl9 stores safely. To set up this type of connection:
Enter the Controller URL (required).
Refer to the Authentication section for detailed instructions.Enter your AppDynamics Client Name.
To retrieve the Client Name, log in to your AppDynamics account, go to Administration (under the cog icon) > API Clients tab, select an API client and copy the Client Name:Image 1: Retrieving the Client Name in AppDynamics UI Enter your AppDynamics Account Name.
To retrieve your Account Name, log in to your AppDynamics account, go to License (under the cog icon) > License Summary > Account Details section and copy the Name:Image 2: Retrieving the Account Name in AppDynamics UI
- Select a Project.
Specifying a Project is helpful when multiple users are spread across multiple teams or projects. When the Project field is left blank then object is assigned to projectdefault
. - Enter a Display Name.
You can enter a friendly name with spaces in this field. - Enter a Name.
The name is mandatory and can only contain lowercase, alphanumeric characters and dashes (for example,my-project-name
). This field is populated automatically when you enter a display name, but you can edit the result. - Enter a Description.
Here you can add details such as who is responsible for the integration (team/owner) and the purpose of creating it. - Click the Add Data Source
AppDynamics Agent
Agent Configuration in the UI
Follow the instructions below to create your AppDynamics agent connection. Refer to the section above for the description of the fields.
- Enter the Controller URL.
- Enter a Project.
- Enter a Display Name.
- Enter a Name.
- Create a Description.
- Click the Add Data Source
Agent Using CLI - YAML
The YAML for setting up an Agent connection to AppDynamics looks like this:
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: Agent
metadata:
name: appdynamics-agent
displayName: AppDynamics Agent # optional
project: default
spec:
description: Agent settings for appdynamics # optional
sourceOf:
- Metrics
- Services
appDynamics:
url: https://yourcompany.saas.appdynamics.com
Important notes:
URL
is mandatory. It is a base URL to an AppDynamics Controller. For more details, refer to AppDynamics Concepts | AppDynamics Documentation.
You can deploy only one Agent in one YAML file by using the sloctl apply
command.
Deploying AppDynamics Agent
When you add the data source, Nobl9 automatically generates a Kubernetes configuration and a Docker command line for you to use to deploy the Agent. Both of these are available in the web UI, under the Agent Configuration section. Be sure to swap in your credentials (e.g., replace <APPD_CLIENT_NAME>
, <APPD_ACCOUNT_NAME>
and <APPD_CLIENT_SECRET>
with your organization key).
- Kubernetes
- Docker
If you use Kubernetes, you can apply the supplied YAML config file to a Kubernetes cluster to deploy the Agent. It will look something like this:
# DISCLAIMER: This deployment description contains only the fields necessary for the purpose of this demo.
# It is not a ready-to-apply k8s deployment description, and the appd_client_name, appd_account_name and appd_client_secret are only exemplary values.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
namespace: default
type: Opaque
stringData:
appd_client_name: "<APPD_CLIENT_NAME>"
appd_account_name: "<APPD_ACCOUNT_NAME>"
appd_client_secret: "<APPD_CLIENT_SECRET>"
client_id: "unique_client_id"
client_secret: "unique_client_secret"
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
namespace: default
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
nobl9-agent-name: "appdynamics-agent"
nobl9-agent-project: "appdynamics-project"
nobl9-agent-organization: "nobl9-dev"
template:
metadata:
labels:
nobl9-agent-name: "appdynamics-agent"
nobl9-agent-project: "appdynamics-project"
nobl9-agent-organization: "nobl9-dev"
spec:
containers:
- name: agent-container
image: nobl9/agent:latest
resources:
requests:
memory: "350Mi"
cpu: "0.1"
env:
- name: N9_CLIENT_ID
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: client_id
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
- name: N9_CLIENT_SECRET
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: client_secret
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
- name: APPD_CLIENT_NAME
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: appd_client_name
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
- name: APPD_ACCOUNT_NAME
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: appd_account_name
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
- name: APPD_CLIENT_SECRET
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: appd_client_secret
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-appd-agent-test
# The N9_METRICS_PORT is a variable specifying the port to which the /metrics and /health endpoints are exposed.
# The 9090 is the default value and can be changed.
# If you don’t want the metrics to be exposed, comment out or delete the N9_METRICS_PORT variable.
- name: N9_METRICS_PORT
value: "9090"
If you use Docker, you can run the Docker command to deploy the Agent. It will look something like this:
# DISCLAIMER: This Docker command contains only the fields necessary for the purpose of this demo.
# It is not a ready-to-apply command, and you will need to replace the placeholder values with your own values.
docker run -d --restart on-failure \
--name nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-appd-agent-test \
-e N9_CLIENT_ID="unique_client_id" \
-e N9_CLIENT_SECRET="unique_client_secret" \
# The N9_METRICS_PORT is a variable specifying the port to which the /metrics and /health endpoints are exposed.
# The 9090 is the default value and can be changed.
# If you don’t want the metrics to be exposed, comment out or delete the N9_METRICS_PORT variable.
-e N9_METRICS_PORT=9090 \
-e APPD_CLIENT_NAME="<APPD_CLIENT_NAME>" \
-e APPD_ACCOUNT_NAME="<APPD_ACCOUNT_NAME>" \
-e APPD_CLIENT_SECRET="<APPD_CLIENT_SECRET>" \
nobl9/agent:latest
Creating SLOs with AppDynamics
Creating SLOs in the UI
Follow the instructions below to create your SLOs with AppDynamics in the UI:
Navigate to Service Level Objectives.
- Click the
button.
In step 1 of the SLO wizard, select the Service the SLO will be associated with.
In step 2, select AppDynamics as the Data Source for your SLO.
Enter the Application Name.
- The Application Name refers to the name of the logical business application defined in AppDynamics.
- To ingest Database Metrics, you must enter Database Monitoring in the Application Name field.
Specify the Metric. You can choose either a Threshold Metric, where a single time series is evaluated against a threshold or a Ratio Metric, which allows you to enter two time series to compare (for example, a count of good requests and total requests).
noteFor the Ratio Metric, you can choose the Data Count Method:
- For the Non-incremental method, we expect it to be the components of the sum.
- For the Incremental method, we expect the value of a metric to be the current sum of some numerator.
For more information, refer to the SLO Calculations Guide.
Enter a Query, or Metric Path for good counter and Metric Path for total counter for the metric you selected. The following are query examples:
Threshold metric for AppDynamics:
Query:End User Experience|App|End User Response Time 95th percentile (ms)
Ratio metric for AppDynamics:
Metric Path for good counter:End User Experience|App|Very Slow Requests
Metric Path for total counter:End User Experience|App|Normal Requests
In step 3, define a Time Window for the SLO.
In step 4, specify the Error Budget Calculation Method and your Objective(s).
When you’re done, click Create SLO.
SLOs using AppDynamics - YAML samples
Here are examples of AppDynamics using a rawMetric
(Threshold Metric) and a countMetric
(Ratio Metric):
- rawMetric
- countMetric
Here’s an example of AppDynamics using a rawMetric
(Threshold Metric)
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: SLO
metadata:
name: appdynamics-end-user-response-calendar
displayName: AppDynamics MyService End User Response Calendar
project: appdynamics-raw
spec:
description: 95th percentile of End User Response 1 Week Calendar
service: appdynamics-myservice-service
indicator:
metricSource:
name: appdynamics-agent
timeWindows:
- unit: Day
count: 7
calendar:
startTime: 2020-03-09 00:00:00
timeZone: Europe/Warsaw
budgetingMethod: Occurrences
objectives:
- displayName: Acceptable
op: lte
rawMetric:
query:
appDynamics:
applicationName: "myapp"
metricPath: "End User Experience|App|End User Response Time 95th percentile (ms)"
value: 10000
target: 0.75
Here’s an example of AppDynamics using a countMetric
(Ratio Metric):
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: SLO
metadata:
name: appdynamics-ratio
displayName: AppDynamics Ratio
project: appdynamics
spec:
description: AppDynamics End User Response 1 Week Calendar
service: appdynamics-service
indicator:
metricSource:
name: appdynamics-agent
timeWindows:
- unit: Day
count: 7
calendar:
startTime: 2020-03-09 00:00:00
timeZone: Europe/Warsaw
budgetingMethod: Occurrences
objectives:
- displayName: Slow Requests
value: 10
target: 0.50
countMetrics:
incremental: false
good:
appDynamics:
applicationName: "myApplication"
metricPath: "End User Experience|App|Slow Requests"
total:
appDynamics:
applicationName: "myApplication"
metricPath: "End User Experience|App|Normal Requests"
- displayName: Very Slow Requests
value: 50
target: 0.91
countMetrics:
incremental: false
good:
appDynamics:
applicationName: "myApplication"
metricPath: "End User Experience|App|Very Slow Requests"
total:
appDynamics:
applicationName: "myApplication"
metricPath: "End User Experience|App|Normal Requests"
Important notes:
Metric specification from AppDynamics has 2 mandatory fields:
applicationName
– mandatory, string, Application name, meaning the name of the logical business application defined in AppDynamics.- To ingest Database Metrics, you must enter Database Monitoring in the Application Name field.
For more details, refer to Configuring Agents in Kubernetes | AppDynamics Documentation.
On top of the same validation rules for
appDynamics
sections as for therawMetric
(Threshold Metric), there is an additional requirement that allapplicationName
fields must have the same value within a single SLO.metricPath
– mandatory, string, full metric path that can be obtained from AppDynamics Controller UI (dashboard).metricPath
must refer to a single time series.Example:
"End User Experience|App|End User Response Time 95th percentile (ms)"
The list of metrics Full Path and their Application Names can be copied directly from the AppDynamics dashboard.
Querying the AppDynamics Server
The Nobl9 agent leverages the Time Range API parameters. It pulls data at a per-minute interval from the AppDynamics server.
Useful Links
Wildcards | AppDynamics Documentation
Configuring Agents in Kubernetes | AppDynamics Documentation
Configure Resource URL Segments | AppDynamics Documentation
AppDynamics Concepts | AppDynamics Documentation
Metric and Snapshot API | AppDynamics Documentation
Agent Metrics | Nobl9 Documentation
Creating SLOs via Terraform | Nobl9 Terraform Documentation
Creating Agents via Terraform | Nobl9 Terraform Documentation