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 Supportβ
Currently, Nobl9 does not support metric paths that contain Wild Cards | AppDynamics Documentation.
Prerequisitesβ
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.
Authenticationβ
Nobl9 Agent calls the Metric and Snapshot API | AppDynamics Documentation. The Agent and Direct configurations for AppDynamics require the following credentials:
Client ID: The AppDynamics Client ID is built from your AppDynamics
apiClientName
and AppDynamicsaccountName
link with the@
sign. For example:apiClientName@accountName
.- 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
. - 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
.
- To retrieve
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 UIβ
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 AppDynamics icon.
Choose Direct or Agent.
AppDynamics Directβ
Direct Configuration in the UIβ
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 ClientID (required).
Refer to the Authentication section for detailed instructions.Enter your AppDynamics Client Secret (required).
Refer to the Authentication section for detailed instructions.Select a Project (mandatory).
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 (optional).
You can enter a friendly name with spaces in this field.Enter a Name (mandatory).
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 (optional).
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 button.
AppDynamics Agentβ
Agent Configuration in the UIβ
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 (required).
Enter a Project (required)
Enter a Name (required).
Enter a Description (optional).
Click the Add Data Source button.
Deploying AppDynamics Agentβ
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_ID>
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 client_id and 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_id: "<APPD_CLIENT_ID>"
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_ID
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: appd_client_id
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
- name: APPD_CLIENT_SECRET
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
key: appd_client_secret
name: nobl9-agent-nobl9-dev-default-name
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-default-name \
-e N9_CLIENT_ID="unique_client_id" \
-e N9_CLIENT_SECRET="unique_client_secret" \
-e APPD_CLIENT_ID="<APPD_CLIENT_ID>" \
-e APPD_CLIENT_SECRET="<APPD_CLIENT_SECRET>" \
nobl9/agent:latest
Creating SLOs with AppDynamicsβ
Creating SLOs in the UIβ
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 one configured in the AppDynamics agent
APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_APPLICATION_NAME
environment variable and is different for each application. - To ingest Database Metrics, you must enter Database Monitoring in the Application Name field.
- The Application Name refers to the one configured in the AppDynamics agent
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).
Enter a Query, or Good Query and Total Query 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: Good Query:
End User Experience|App|Very Slow Requests
Total Query: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).
In step 5, add a Name, Description, and other details about your SLO. You can also select Alert Policies and Labels on this screen.
When youβre done, click Create SLO.
SLOs using AppDynamics - YAML samplesβ
Here are examples of AppDynamics using a rawMetric
(Threshold Metric) and a countMetric
(Ratio Metric):
- rawMetric
- countMetric
Hereβs 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
Hereβs 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
β mandatory, string, Application name as configured in AppDynamics agent'sAPPDYNAMICS_AGENT_APPLICATION_NAME
environment variable and is different for each application.- 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
β 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 Serverβ
The Nobl9 agent leverages the Time Range API parameters. It pulls data at a per-minute interval from the AppDynamics server.
Useful Linksβ
Wildcards | AppDynamics Documentation
Configuring Agents in Kubernetes | AppDynamics Documentation
Configure Resource URL Segments | AppDynamics Documentation