New Synthetic monitoring APIs and use cases introduced in v22.5

[Allvin.Muthunayagam]

Synthetic monitoring APIs introduced in v22.5, their prerequisites, and use cases to make the most of them

As of May 2022, AppDynamics Synthetic monitoring features can now be accessed using REST APIs. This article lists these new APIs, as well as a selection of use cases.

In this article...

• New Synthetic monitoring APIs
  • Overview: Use cases with the new Synthetic monitoring APIs
• Integrate Synthetic jobs with code repositories 
  • Integrate a synthetic script from a code repository 
  • Use Synthetic monitoring APIs to manage code centrally 
  • Implement use cases 
• Integrate synthetic jobs with CI/CD pipeline 
  • Implement use case 
• Additional Resources

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New Synthetic monitoring APIs

WEB MONITORING	Create Synthetic Web Monitoring Job Create Multiple Synthetic Web Monitoring Jobs Update Synthetic Web Monitoring Job Get Synthetic Web Monitoring Job Configuration Data Get All Synthetic Web Monitoring Jobs Get Synthetic Web Monitoring Job Execution Status
API MONITORING	Create Synthetic API Monitoring Job Create Multiple Synthetic API Monitoring Jobs Update Synthetic API Monitoring Job Get Synthetic API Monitoring Job Configuration Data Get All Synthetic API Monitoring Jobs Get Synthetic API Monitoring Job Execution Status

Use cases with the new Synthetic monitoring APIs

Using these REST APIs, customers can implement new use cases and scenarios that are not otherwise supported within the AppDynamics Controller UI.

Following are a few of the new use cases that can be implemented using the Synthetic monitoring APIs

• Integrate Synthetic jobs with code repositories
• Integrate Synthetic jobs with CI/CD pipeline
• Execute Synthetic jobs in multiple environments - Test, Pre-prod, Production

Apart from these use cases, Synthetic monitoring APIs can be used to implement these features:

• Manage the Synthetic jobs from code repositories/central location
• Manage the Synthetic jobs using APIs without logging into AppDynamics Controller
• Bulk creation and management of Synthetic jobs
• Schedule maintenance window
• Analyze license consumption by job/app/collection

Let's explore in detail how these new use cases can be implemented.

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Integrate Synthetic jobs with code repositories

Scenario 1 | Integrate a synthetic script from a code repository

Synthetic web monitoring scripts are created using any 3rd-party script recorder, or by writing Python-based selenium scripts. After creating the scripts, they are stored in code repositories. From there, the scripts are copied and pasted into AppDynamics job editor for creating Synthetic monitoring jobs. 

When these synthetic web monitoring scripts need updating, modification, or debugging, they are copied from AppDynamics jobs editor and pasted into a Python IDE for updating or debugging scripts. It is hard to maintain the same code base in both the code repository and the AppDynamics jobs editor because of this repeated copy/pasting.

With Synthetic monitoring APIs, the scripts in the code repositories can be integrated with the Synthetic monitoring jobs in AppDynamics, thereby avoiding multiple copies and versions of each script. Any changes required in a script can be updated in the code repository, and then updated in the AppDynamics jobs using the Synthetic monitoring APIs.

Scenario 2 | Use synthetic monitoring APIs to manage code centrally

A Synthetic monitoring application can have multiple jobs. Job configurations (such as browsers, locations, execution schedule, execution frequency, etc.) are configured for each job during job creation. 

Making configuration changes to these job configurations across all the jobs in an application is not possible from the AppDynamics Controller. There, since the configurations can only be changed for a single job at time, it is difficult to manage the (jobs) configuration when the application has several jobs.

Instead of managing job configurations at the job level in AppDynamics Controller UI, the configuration can be stored and managed centrally from a code repository using Synthetic monitoring APIs.

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How can I implement either use case?

Let's explore in detail how these scenarios can be implemented:

Prerequisites, Create a job

Prerequisites to integrating Synthetic jobs with code repositories

1. Synthetic monitoring jobs scripts are stored in code repository
2. Job configurations are stored in a JSON file in the code repository
• Job configuration is the list of all the parameters required for creating a job. The script used in the job could be part of the jobs configuration, or it could be stored in a separate file and referenced in the job configuration.
  
  Each job should have the job configuration data.
  
  • Job configuration of each job could be stored in separate files, or 
  • The job configurations of all the jobs in the application could be stored in a single JSON file.

Create a job using the following execution steps

This job must be triggered whenever there is a commit in the code repository where the jobs scripts and jobs configurations are stored.

1. Check whether any job needs to be created

• Get the job configurations data from the code repository
• Check whether each job configuration has a job ID

NOTE | All jobs created in AppDynamics will have a job ID

2. Create job 
   If any job configuration in code repository does not have a job ID:
   • Create a new job in AppDynamics using Create Synthetic job API or create multiple jobs APIs
   • Update the job id received in the response from create API in the jobs  configuration in code repository
     
     

3. Check whether any jobs need to be updated
   If job ID exists for any job, check to see if it needs to be updated:
   • Use the Get Synthetic job configuration data API to fetch the the jobs configuration from AppDynamics 
   • Compare all parameters of the job configuration in Appdynamics with the corresponding parameters in the job configuration in code repository
     
     

4. Update job
   If the job configuration of a job in the code repository does not match the same job's job configuration  in AppDynamics, update the Synthetic job in AppDynamics using update Synthetic job API.

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Integrate Synthetic jobs with CI/CD pipeline

Whenever a new code is deployed in the production, DevOps Engineers want to ensure that the application is available and performant. If the newly deployed code has any availability or performance issues, DevOps might want to roll back or pause the deployment.

Using Synthetic monitoring APIs, DevOps Engineers can monitor the availability and performance of the application or microservices as part of the deployment pipeline. Based on the Synthetic monitoring availability and performance data gathered as part of the deployment pipeline, a DevOps Engineer can automate deployment decisions such as continuing, pausing, or rolling back the deployment, etc. 

How can I implement this use case?

Let's explore how this use case can be implemented.

Prerequisites for integrating Synthetic jobs with CI/CD pipeline

1. Synthetic monitoring jobs are available for the application or microservices.
2. CI/CD pipelines are available for the deployment of the application or the microservice.

Create a job with the following execution steps

The job must be triggered after the successful deployment of the application or microservice.

1. Start the Synthetic monitoring jobs using the Update Synthetic monitoring jobs API. To start the Synthetic monitoring job, set the value of "userEnabled" parameter in the job configuration “true”.
   
   
2. Monitor the availability and performance of the jobs using Get job status API. Get the job status every minute or based on the frequency of the job execution.
   
   
3. Deployment decision/action based on Synthetic monitoring jobs status.
   

   Availability issue and  job status	Deployment actions
   Availability issue with job status Failed	Roll back the deployment Create alerts, PD or Zendesk ticket
   Availability issue with job status Warning	Pause further deployment Create alerts, PD or Zendesk ticket
   Application available with job status OK for a specific duration	Continue the deployment or complete the deployment process/steps.

4. After completing the deployment, stop the Synthetic monitoring using Update Synthetic monitoring jobs API.
   
   Set the value of the "userEnabled" parameter in the job configuration to “false” to stop the Synthetic monitoring job.

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Additional Resources

In the Documentation Portal

• Synthetic Monitoring API 

In the Knowledge Base

• Synthetic API Monitoring APIs 
• Changes to Synthetic monitoring browsers