Product Update, April 2023 (v23.4)

[Claudia.Landivar]

What AppDynamics enhancements were new in April 2023? 

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In April, releases include the AppDynamics Cloud* enhancements, various Agents, and the AppDynamics Enterprise Controller. Versions 23.4.0-23.4.1.

*Now, Cisco Cloud Observability 11/27/2023

In this article…

• Summary of releases, April 2023
• What release highlights should I know about?
  Product Areas: AppDynamics Cloud | Agents | SaaS Controller | On-premises Console
• Heads Up - What else should I know about?
  Updates: Cisco Live | University at Cisco Live | Webinars
  
• Resolved issues
• Essentials

What release highlights should I know about?

The following table includes release highlights AppDynamics features and capabilities released in April 2023. Check out the table to see who in your organization may be most interested in or impacted by each enhancement.

For minor fixes or patches, please refer to the respective release notes links below.

PRODUCTS / ENHANCEMENT HIGHLIGHTS
AppDynamics Cloud* enhancement highlights	User	Admin	SecOps	DevOps
Anomaly Detection for infrastructure entities	✓	✓︎	︎
Expanded coverage for Azure entities	✓	✓		✓
Logs page usability enhancements	✓	✓
Kubernetes infrastructure enhancements	✓	✓
Usability enhancements in the Logs page	✓	✓
Agent enhancement highlights
Analytics Agent	✓	✓		✓
Android Agent	✓	✓		✓
Cluster Agent	✓	✓
Java Agent	✓	✓
Machine Agent	✓	✓
.NET Agent	✓	✓
PHP Agent	✓	✓
SaaS Controller for Cisco Secure Application
Accounts global identity migration	✓	✓
Alert and Respond	✓
OpenTelemetry	✓
Cisco Secure Application	✓	✓	✓
Dash Studio	✓	✓
Licensing	✓	✓
AppDynamics On-Premises enhancement highlights
Enterprise Controller v23.4x	✓	✓

Where can I find detailed information about this month's enhancements?

Product enhancements are described in detail, and on an ongoing basis, on the respective documentation portal pages, i.e., AppDynamics Cloud Release Notes, AppDynamics (CSaaS) Release Notes, Release Notes for AppDynamics Accounts and Licensing, and AppDynamics On-Premises APM Platform Release Notes.

Where available, see links to this month's Release Notes below, under each product heading.

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AppDynamics Cloud highlights

NOTE | See release highlights on the What’s New carousel, and the full 23.4 Release Notes for a complete, ongoing, and sortable list of Agent enhancements

Now known as Cisco Cloud Observability 11/27/2023

Anomaly Detection for infrastructure entities	Anomaly detection on AWS EC2 helps you discover issues before they propagate and impact your business.  (GA v23.4)  DOCUMENTATION  Anomaly Detection in Cisco Cloud Observability (formerly Cloud Native Application Observability)
Expanded coverage for Azure entities	You can now monitor Azure Functions, Azure Container Instances, Azure Containers, and Azure Service Bus. (GA v23.4) DOCUMENTATION  • Azure Functions  • Azure Container Instances  • Azure Containers  • Azure Service Bus
Monitor   non-Kubernetes Windows hosts	Monitoring and alerting on key infrastructure metrics now extend to non-Kubernetes Windows workloads hosted on AWS, Azure, or your private environment. (GA v23.4) DOCUMENTATION   • AppDynamics Infrastructure Collector for Windows Settings   • AppDynamics Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector Windows Settings
Kubernetes infrastructure enhancements	To ensure cluster uniqueness, such as if there are multiple clusters from different deployments sharing the same name, a new attribute k8s.cluster.id was introduced. To use this, you must upgrade your services.  (GA v23.4) DOCUMENTATION  Upgrade Operators and Collectors.
Usability enhancements to the Logs page	Enhancements include the reorganized Fields panel with a raw message wrap toggle, links to the related entity-centric page, and drag-select support for histograms. (GA v23.4)   DOCUMENTATION Troubleshoot with Logs.

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Agent release highlights

NOTE |See the full 23.4 Release Notes for a complete, ongoing, and sortable list of Agent enhancements  

Analytics Agent	This release includes SnakeYAML 2.0, which resolves a critical flaw, also referred to as CVE-2022-1471   (GA v23.4.0 Released April 21, 2023)
Android Agent	This release includes support for Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) v8.0, and for AndroidX Fragments. Two configuration options were replaced with new ones.  (GA v23.4.1 Released April 27, 2023)
Cluster Agent	You can now configure the security context parameters for auto instrumentation.   DOCUMENTATION  Auto Instrumentation Configuration  The Cluster Agent and AppDynamics operator images are updated with the latest version of Go. To use Redhat-based Cluster Agent or AppDynamics Operator, you need to adjust your firewall settings as suggested by Redhat.   Specify the priorityClass in the Infraviz and the Cluster Agent configuration files.  DOCUMENTATION    • Cluster Agent YAML File Configuration Reference  • Install Infrastructure Visibility with Helm Charts  (GA v23.4.0 Released April 25, 2023)
Java Agent	This release includes support for cgroup v2, an important enhancement as some Kubernetes features exclusively use cgroup v2 for enhanced resource management and isolation.   There is a known issue JAVA-11957.  (GA v23.4.0 Released May 4, 2023)
Machine Agent	This release includes an option to exclude file cache memory from the memory usage calculation on AIX.  DOCUMENTATION Exclude File Cache Memory from Memory Usage   (GA v23.4.0 Released April 25, 2023)
.NET	This release includes an option to ignore exceptions using the nested exception messages.   DOCUMENTATION On the App Agent Node Properties (N-R) page, see  enable-ignore-nested-exception-message and   nested-exception-message-depth   This release includes an option to ignore exceptions using the nested exception messages.  (GA v23.4.0 Released April 25, 2023)
PHP Agent	This release includes an updated Java proxy, as well as upgrades to Apache Log4cx v0.11.0, Apache Protable Runtime 1.7.2, Apache Portable Runtime Utility 1.6.3, Expat 2.5.0, and Protocol Buffers v3.21.12.   (GA v23.4.0 Released April 28, 2023)

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SaaS Controller enhancement highlights

NOTE | See the On-premises and AMP Platform Release Announcements page for a complete, ongoing, and sortable list of enhancements

Accounts global identity migration	Beginning with this month’s SaaS Controller release, AppDynamics-managed user accounts will begin migrating to the AppDynamics Identity Provider on a rolling basis. The migration brings this kind of account under the same management as other AppDynamics accounts. You will be able to manage all AppDynamics accounts under a single identity.  KNOWLEDGE BASE FAQ  AppDynamics Global Identity Migration   (GA v23.4 Released April 10, 2023)
Alert and Respond	Now, when you create or update a health rule for the type User Experience Browser Apps, you can select metrics to evaluate critical or warning criteria for entities pages or virtual pages.  You can monitor the user experience by tracking how much time it takes for all visual elements within the first screen (above the fold) to load in an end-user's browser, and be alerted for any issues.  DOCUMENTATION  Create and Configure Conditions.  Now, request your Cisco Accounts team to extend the health rule violation status beyond the default auto-cancellation period. This status is cancelled automatically when the health rule violates continuously for 72 hours.  DOCUMENTATION  Troubleshoot Health Rule Violations.  (GA v23.4 Released April 10, 2023)
AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry™	AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry™ introduces transaction snapshots in a waterfall view, which allows you to quickly determine which calls consumed the transaction time for a given snapshot. Click a segment to view the resource wait time for its business transaction  DOCUMENTATION View OpenTelemetry™ Data in the Controller UI  (GA v23.4 Released April 25, 2023)
Cisco Secure Application	This release adds Business Risk metrics for Alerts.  DOCUMENTATION  Alerts Using Cisco Secure Application  (GA v23.4 Released April 28, 2023)
Dash Studio	A new list view includes Last Viewed and Views in Last 7 Days columns, among other enhancements.  The health widget now supports the within function for business transactions.  (GA v23.4 Released April 26, 2023)
Licensing	For Infrastructure-based Licenses (IBL), enable license rules that help you conserve Cluster Agent license consumption when the system is unable to detect vCPU information. In such cases, the Cluster Agent without vCPU information will be rejected and won’t be registered, helping you avoid consuming a license for that agent.  DOCUMENTATION  Machine and Cluster Agent License Prioritization  (GA v23.4 Released April 10, 2023)

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What else should I know about?

AppDynamics heads to Cisco Live, June 4-8

Join us in Las Vegas for keynotes, innovation talks, technical sessions, and demos. You'll find AppDynamics in Booth 3307: World of Solutions — alongside the Cisco FSO and Emerging Technology and Incubation teams. 

Find the details about where else you'll find AppDynamics and what we'll be doing here in News & Announcements, as well as the AppDynamics Blog. To learn more about the event as a whole—including registration, and the global broadcast, see https://ciscolive.com/global. 

 

AppDynamics University News 

The AppDynamics University team have launched a refreshed user experience, as well as releasing a number of new courses. Read the summary in the Education Product Updates, January and February 2023. 

AppDynamics University at Cisco Live

Sign up for Bill Miller’s breakout session at Cisco Live US Preparing for your AppDynamics Certification(s) - BRKCRT-2017 

The session is for site reliability engineers, architects, DevOps, platform administrators or partner consultants who work with AppDynamics technologies. Bill will discuss available role-based Certifications and share sample exam questions, preparation resources, strategies, recommended learning and tips to help you prepare effectively and efficiently for your exams. 

It qualifies for Cisco Continuing Education Credit and will be held Thursday, June 9, starting at 9:30 am (:60). 

Webinars

Register for the following on-demand webinars:

• Take cloud native monitoring to the next level with OpenTelemetry™  
  Cisco AppDynamics’ leverage of OpenTelemetry™ provides an efficient method for collecting and correlating MELT data. Learn how embracing OTel open source standards can help explain how services interact and shorten feedback loops to rapidly resolve application performance issues. 
   
• Building Blocks to a Great Observability Solution 
  Application performance management is one of the building blocks to establishing a great end-to-end observability solution for end-users and the business alike. After this webinar, you’ll understand the scope of APM—present and future. You will explore some of AppDynamics core APM components, and will become familiar with how OpenTelemetry fits in APM. 
  
  

Stay tuned for new webinars

Other new webinars on the horizon include Introduction to AppDynamics, AppDynamics + ThousandEyes, and new K8s content.

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Resolved issues

^New! Now, you can sort the completeAppDynamics Cloud Release Notes and AppDynamics (CSaaS) Release Notes by any heading, including product, severity, version information, and release date. They are updated on an ongoing basis. 

The following key issues were resolved in April.  

CLUSTERMON-4153 | Golang version updated to latest (1.20.3) 

DBMON-8861 | Resolved: SQL query and query time are not displayed on the dashboard. (Affected v22.22.0)

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Essentials

PLANNING AN UPGRADE? | Please check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation as part of your upgrade planning process

	Download Essential Components (Agents, Enterprise Console, Controller (on-prem), Events Service, EUM Components)
	Download Additional Components (SDKs, Plugins, etc.)	How do I get started upgrading my AppDynamics components for any release?
	Product Announcements, Alerts, and Hot Fixes	Open Source Extensions
	License Entitlements and Restrictions	Introducing AppDynamics Cloud

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