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AppDynamics

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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.

AppDynamics parameters and supported features in Nobl9
General support:
Release channel: Stable, Beta
Connection method: Agent, Direct
Replay and SLI Analyzer: Historical data limit 30 days
Event logs: Supported
Query checker: Not supported
Query parameters retrieval: Supported
Timestamp cache persistence: Supported
Query parameters:
Query interval: 1 min
Query delay: 1 min
Jitter: 15 sec
Timeout: 30 sec
Agent details and minimum required versions for supported features:
Plugin name: n9appd
Query delay environment variable: APPD_QUERY_DELAY
Replay and SLI Analyzer: 0.68.0
Query parameters retrieval: 0.73.2
Timestamp cache persistence: 0.65.0
Additional notes:
No support for metric paths with Wild Cards
Learn more Opens in a new tab

Creating SLOs with AppDynamics​

Nobl9 Web​

Follow the instructions below to create your SLOs with AppDynamics on the Nobl9 Web:

  1. Navigate to Service Level Objectives.
  2. Click .
  3. Select a Service.
    It will be the location for your SLO in Nobl9.
  4. Select your AppDynamics data source.
  5. Modify Period for Historical Data Retrieval, when necessary.
    • This value defines how far back in the past your data will be retrieved when replaying your SLO based on AppDynamics.
    • A longer period can extend the data loading time for your SLO.
    • Must be a positive whole number up to the maximum period value you've set when adding the AppDynamics data source.
  6. Select the Metric type:
    • Threshold metric: a single time series is evaluated against a threshold.
    • A Ratio metric: two-time series for comparison. For a ratio metric:
      • Select the Data count method: incremental or non-incremental.
      • Specify a time series for comparison against total: a good metric means a ratio of good events or bad metric, a ratio of bad events.
  1. Provide metric paths for your SLO:

    • Example threshold metric path: End User Experience|App|End User Response Time 95th percentile (ms)

    • Example ratio metric paths:
      Use one of the numerators and a denominator per SLO
      Good counter (numerator): End User Experience|App|Very Slow Requests
      Bad counter (numerator): End User Experience|App|Slow Requests
      Total counter (denominator): End User Experience|App|Normal Requests

      SLI values for good and total
      When choosing the query for the ratio SLI (countMetrics), keep in mind that the values ​​resulting from that query for both good and total:
      • Must be positive.
      • While we recommend using integers, fractions are also acceptable.
        • If using fractions, we recommend them to be larger than 1e-4 = 0.0001.
      • Shouldn't be larger than 1e+20.
  1. Define the Time window for your SLO:
  2. Configure the Error budget calculation method and Objectives:
    • Occurrences method counts good attempts against the count of total attempts.
    • Time Slices method measures how many good minutes were achieved (when a system operates within defined boundaries) during a time window.
    • You can define up to 12 objectives for an SLO.

      • Similar threshold values for objectives
      To use similar threshold values for different objectives in your SLO, we recommend differentiating them by setting varying decimal points for each objective.
      For example, if you want to use threshold value 1 for two objectives, set it to 1.0000001 for the first objective and to 1.0000002 for the second one.
      Learn more about threshold value uniqueness.
  3. Add the Display name, Name, and other settings for your SLO:
    • Name identifies your SLO in Nobl9. After you save the SLO, its name becomes read-only.
      Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes.
    • Create composite SLO: with this option selected, you create a composite SLO 1.0. Composite SLOs 1.0 are deprecated. They're fully operable; however, we encourage you to create new composite SLOs 2.0.
      You can create composite SLOs 2.0 with sloctl using the provided template. Alternatively, you can create a composite SLO 2.0 with Nobl9 Terraform provider.
    • Set Notifications on data. With it, Nobl9 will notify you in the cases when SLO won't be reporting data for more than 15 minutes.
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      Up to 20 items of each type per SLO is allowed.
  4. Click CREATE SLO.

    5. SLO configuration use case
    Check the SLO configuration use case for a real-life SLO example.

sloctl​

Sample Appdynamics threshold SLO
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: SLO
metadata:
  name: api-server-slo
  displayName: API Server SLO
  project: default
  labels:
    area:
      - latency
      - slow-check
    env:
      - prod
      - dev
    region:
      - us
      - eu
    team:
      - green
      - sales
  annotations:
    area: latency
    env: prod
    region: us
    team: sales
spec:
  description: Example AppDynamics SLO
  indicator:
    metricSource:
      name: app-dynamics
      project: default
      kind: Agent
  budgetingMethod: Occurrences
  objectives:
    - displayName: Good response (200)
      value: 200
      name: ok
      target: 0.95
      rawMetric:
        query:
          appDynamics:
            applicationName: api-server
            metricPath: Overall Application Performance|Average Response Time (ms)
      op: lte
      primary: true
  service: api-server
  timeWindows:
    - unit: Month
      count: 1
      isRolling: false
      calendar:
        startTime: '2022-12-01 00:00:00'
        timeZone: UTC
  alertPolicies:
    - fast-burn-5x-for-last-10m
  attachments:
    - url: https://docs.nobl9.com
      displayName: Nobl9 Documentation
  anomalyConfig:
    noData:
      alertMethods:
        - name: slack-notification
          project: default
FieldTypeDescription
query.appDynamics.applicationName
mandatory
stringThe name of your required AppDynamics logical business application.
To ingest Database Metrics, enter Database Monitoring in this field.
In ratio metrics, set it to identical values for numerator and denominator.
query.appDynamics.metricPath
mandatory
stringThe full metric path obtained from AppDynamics Controller UI.
Must refer to a single time series.
Read more about metric full path and application name in Metric Browser.

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.

For a more in-depth look, consult additional resources:
Adding AppDynamics as a data sourceAdding data sources in Nobl9 documentationMetric BrowserAppDynamics documentationAgent Settings for Monitoring DatabaseAppDynamics documentationAppDynamics ConceptsAppDynamics documentationAlerting in Nobl9Nobl9 documentationCreating SLOs via TerraformNobl9 Terraform provider
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