Release Highlights: What's new in Spring '18 (4.4.3)?

[Nina.Wolinsky]

We are very excited to announce general availability of version 4.4.3. The emergence of container technologies has drastically accelerated the use of cloud technologies and platforms along with dynamic deployment strategies like blue/green and canary. Application architectures continue to become more complex and dynamic, which only increases the need for the capabilities provided by APM solutions. In this release, we have focused on providing the enhancements and capabilities our users need to ensure the performance, availability and success of their applications in these ever dynamic environments.  

• Improved monitoring for microservice and containerized applications, including Kubernetes and OpenShift environments
• Automatic discovery and monitoring of Single-Page Application frameworks including Angular, React, Ember, Polymer and more
• Monitoring support for applications built with Microsoft .NET Core
• Security and privacy enhancements for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Increased support for deploying the AppDynamics platform in AWS, including the ability to leverage the AWS Aurora database

Cheers,

Tom Rabaut & AppDynamics Product Management

These release highlights will guide you through the newest features and capabilities. You’ll notice in the grid below that each feature enhancement calls out who in your organization may find this most interesting and may be most impacted.

Product	Feature Enhancement	User and Performance Analyst	Admin and Implementer	Developer
Infrastructure Visibility	Kubernetes Visibility	✓	✓	✓
	Detailed container metrics for enhanced Docker visibility	✓	✓	✓
	Detect CPU throttling in Docker containers		✓	✓
	Database Blocking Sessions Window is now available for Sybase ASE	✓
End User Monitoring	IoT OpenSource C/C++ SDK		✓	✓
	Brand new support for single-page browser applications, including React, Angular, and most other Jav...	✓	✓	✓
Application Performance	.NET Core on Windows supported on the .NET Microservices Agent		✓	✓
	Support for Microsoft Orleans Framework		✓	✓
	Support for Eclipse Vert.x version 3.5	✓	✓	✓
Platform	Deploy the Controller on AWS with Aurora Database		✓	✓
	View Enterprise Console job progress	✓
	Security and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)	✓	✓	✓
	Converting license rule entitlements		✓
Business Performance	Business Outcomes are now called Business Journeys	✓
	Completion status for Business Journeys	✓
	Use custom events to create Business Journey Milestones	✓
	Three new ADQL fields for mobile snapshots		✓	✓

Resolved Issues 

• Empty external-services directory in IBM JVM installer [JAVA-3178]
• Analytics Not Firing Up On IBM JVM [ANALYTICS-6914]
• First Byte is calculated incorrectly [SYNTH-2329]
• Machine Agent name check is case-sensitive, which prevents some agents from registering with Control... [SERVER-4374]
• Internal check to find EUM-enabled applications for user account is slow [MRUM-1120]
• Tier Dashboard shows nodes marked as Historical [APMPLAT-6226]
• .NET Agent 4.4.x configuration utility failing where .NET Framework 4.0 is not present [DOTNET-2224]
• db.cnf user changes to root after upgrade using EConsole [ECONSOLE-2545]
• InstantiationException error occurs when starting JVM in some situations [JAVA-2188]

A complete list of resolved issues is available in Release Notes

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Complete Release Notes are now available

Additional resources are now available 

Kubernetes Visibility

If you are using Kubernetes to orchestrate container-based applications, you can now deploy AppDynamics Server Agents to identify pod and container-level issues impacting performance. Server Agents will collect metadata and resource usage metrics for each container that runs as part of the monitored application, as well as server and machine metrics for the Kubernetes node itself, which can then be viewed or used for health rules, alerts and dashboards in AppDynamics. Using Kubernetes labels (such as Pod, Container or ReplicaSet) as search parameters, you can quickly view container details, identify trends, and diagnose the root cause of application issues faster.  Tagged Metrics allow you to view all standard APM metrics partitioned by Kubernetes label, to allow easy monitoring and troubleshooting of blue-green or canary deployment patterns. Visit the resources below to get started:

1. Kubernetes Visibility Overview
2. Viewing Kubernetes Visibility
3. Example of a Kubernetes Visibility Workflow

 

IoT OpenSource C/C++ SDK

The IoT C/C++ SDK is now open source and available in the GitHub repository for account owners, administrators, and developers to clone, modify and contribute to without experiencing licensing issues. The SDK allows you to monitor your IoT applications, including errors, performance, network request performance, and business usage performance. To access the GitHub iot-cpp-sdk repository, click here.

Brand new support for single-page browser applications, including React, Angular, and most other JavaScript frameworks 

New single-page app support (SPA2) provides very accurate timing of end-user experience and works out-of-the-box for most SPA frameworks (certified for React and Angular 1-5). SPA2 must be turned on explicitly. To learn how to monitor single-page applications, visit Monitor Single-Page Applications and SPA2 Monitoring. 

.NET Core on Windows supported on the .NET Microservices Agent

AppDynamics is excited to announce the general availability of the AppDynamics .NET Core agent for Windows so you can easily monitor .NET Core applications running on Azure cloud or other public clouds without having to utilize the full .NET Framework. These lightweight and reliable agents provide full-stack and cross-stack visibility into your application and business performance by collecting infrastructure and end-user metrics. To get started, deploy the official .NET Core Microservices Agent to your solution in Visual Studio using the instructions outlined here: .NET Core Microservices Agent Installation

Deploy the Controller on AWS with Aurora Database

The AppDynamics CloudFormation template makes it easier for on-prem customers to deploy a Controller to AWS using an Aurora database. AWS gives you benefit of data backups, scalability, and high availability, while the CloudFormation template automates the provisioning and configuration of the infrastructure components so you don’t have to complete the process manually. 

The Enterprise Console lets you to install the Controller directly on an Aurora database rather than having to install it on MySQL and migrate to Aurora, which offers better performance than MySQL. If you having an existing on-premises Controller database, you can migrate it to Aurora to experience all of the added benefits. Visit the resources below to get started: 

1. AWS Controller Deployment Overview
2. Prepare the AWS Machine for the Controller
3. Deploy the Controller on AWS using CloudFormation
4. Migrate the Controller Database to Aurora (for existing on-premises Controller databases)

View Enterprise Console job progress in real time

Review Enterprise Console job details while a job is still in progress with new View Details button. This feature can help you troubleshoot faster without having to connect to remote hosts to see failures in logs. Learn about reviewing logs in our official documentation: Platform Log Files

Security and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

AppDynamics is dedicated to preparing our business and customers for the impacts of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a privacy and data protection law that will be put in place on May 25, 2018. To learn more about the key projects our team has in place and is continuing to work on in order to achieve compliance for GDPR, visit our GDPR Privacy Center.

Converting license rule entitlements

If you have an existing license that includes individual agent SKUs, license rule entitlements will be converted if you are later given a new license that replaces the SKUs with the APM SKUs.

Business Outcomes are now called Business Journeys

Business Outcomes will now be referred to as Business Journeys in the AppDynamics UI and in all documentation. When you see this change, please note the new name refers to the same feature.

Completion Status for Business Journeys

You can quickly track the status of a Business Journey with the new [completed] field using boolean values. 

Use custom events to create Business Journey Milestones

Custom events captured using the Analytics API can now be used as the analytics source when creating Milestones for Business Journeys. Visit Creating Business Journeys to start building your Business Journeys.

Analytics Mobile Requests Data includes new fields

The Analytics Mobile Requests Data now includes the following new fields: platform, requestContentLength, responseContentLength, and happenedinbackground.

Additional Resources

• Monitoring Cloud Applications
• AWS and AppDynamics APM
• Deploy AppDynamics for Azure
• Pivotal Cloud Foundry
• Download essential components

Ask a question about the release.

Complete Release Notes are now available