Today we announce a major update with the release of AppDynamics v4.5. The on-going adoption of microservice architectures and the increasing use of asynchronous application frameworks make it easier than ever to build highly scalable, resilient applications. Each application node may be simpler, but the overall architecture continues to increase in complexity. In AppDynamics v4.5, we introduce significant new support for asynchronous frameworks, new capabilities in containerization, and additional support for myriad Cloud platforms.
Key Highlights
- Take advantage of 4.5 Language Agents (e.g., Java, .NET, Node.js) now without upgrading your Controller (requires Controller version 4.4.1+).
- Accelerated diagnosis and issue resolution with Snapshot Correlation, Network Visibility, and the new Snapshot Waterfall Viewer:
- Show the impact of Business Transactions on the database
- Identify network issues with Network Visibility correlated to the Business Transaction
- Diagnose code-level issues faster with the improved snapshot viewer
- Navigate effortlessly between related processing activity segments
- Understand the impact of external dependencies on the Waterfall
- Unified overview of all data collectors within the snapshot
- More secure automation than ever with token-based authentication for REST APIs — no more passwords embedded in scripts.
- Enhanced real-time insights into business performance with new out of the box dashboards and critical metrics for Business Journeys, plus added time zone support for Experience Level Management (XLM).
- New support for .NET Core on Linux via our SDK.
- Couchbase NoSQL support and even more database monitoring improvements.
- Bolstered Cloud capabilities — additional monitoring support for OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF).
- PCF service broker tile has been revamped for tighter integration with PCF, including full infrastructure KPI metrics and an out of the box dashboard for a single view of system health and availability.
- Fully integrated Docker/Kubernetes container monitoring is now available for OpenShift v3.
- New IoT capabilities — trace an API service request from an IoT device to the AppDynamics Business Transaction with IoT BT Correlation, available through REST APIs and IoT SDKs.
- Mobile SDKs offer improved support for hybrid applications mixing web views with native code — follow the end-to-end story of your user’s journey.
- Enhanced GDPR Audit capabilities — new dashboard displays a unified view of all data collection across AppDynamics product lines.
Cheers,
Tom Rabaut & AppDynamics Product Management
These release highlights will guide you through the newest features and capabilities. Notice in the grid below each feature enhancement identifies most interested or impacted users.
Resolved Issues
As part of 4.5, we resolved several issues, including:
A list of key resolved issues is available here. All resolved issues are listed in the Complete Release Notes
Support for .NET Core for Linux SDK
Gain visibility into your .NET Core applications and optimize business performance using the .NET Core for Linux SDK. With the SDK, you’ll have cross-application support and can monitor the migration of applications to microservice architectures. The SDK works with LibAgent natively on Linux for a more integrated Linux experience and is supported on CentOS7 and Ubuntu 14.0.4 with a NuGet package deployment. Full documentation
Snapshot Waterfall Viewer
Identify delays due to backend responses using the Waterfall View in the snapshot viewer, which now shows relationships between segments, includes external backends as segments and shows resource timing for business transactions. By following the thread end-to-end, you can see where time was spent processing a business transaction and troubleshoot those specific areas. A centralized view of MIDC displays all data collectors on one screen so you can access details faster. Full documentation
Business Transaction and Backend Timing Enhancements
Business transaction and backend timings reflect response times for supported asynchronous entry and backend calls so you can get a more accurate reading of the processing time. Full documentation
Out of the Box Instrumentation for IBM BPM
Out-of-the-box configuration provides Business Transaction discovery and naming along with data collectors to allow users to stitch together business transactions captured from the BPM BPM product into Business Journeys so you can track the technical and business performance of your BPM processes. Full documentation
Out of the Box Instrumentation for Spring Batch Framework
Proactively predict and prevent issues while a batch is running instead of catching them after the batch has completed. If you use Spring Batch for batch processing, the Java agent will now create Business Transactions named after the job, step, and tasklet, and correlate chunks passed across thread boundaries or process boundaries (via JMS). Full documentation
Additional Java Framework and Backend Support
We have added support for several Java frameworks, including Axon, Vert.x 3.5, Spring integration 4, JAX-RS async client, and Kafka correlation, to ensure monitoring capabilities are as comprehensive as possible. Full documentation
Language Agent Compatibility
Take advantage of 4.5 Language Agent features without waiting for a 4.5 controller upgrade. 4.5 is the first release where the newer agents can work against older controllers (4.4.1+), bringing increased flexibility to your upgrade schedules. Full documentation
Custom Virtual Page API for SPA2 Monitoring
AppDynamics 4.4.3 added support for many JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular 4+. This version adds an API you can call to report custom virtual pages that aren't detected automatically. Full documentation
Faster Root Cause Analysis for Browser RUM
The Browser Analyze screen has several improvements to help you under problems faster: a graph of end-user response time percentiles over time to understand how many users are affected by an issue, a Performance Impact score for each Page, Browser, and Country to narrow down on problem areas, and Resource Timing snapshots for all page views to get to the root-cause. Full documentation
Code Issues Dashboard for Mobile
The Code Issues Dashboard provides visibility into non-crash issues that still impact customers, like application hangs, slow UI, and caught exceptions. You can look at user journeys that result in code issues to easily reproduce problems and view full stack traces and code issue trends to proactively improve end user experience. Having this information available in one comprehensive dashboard allows you to resolve issues faster and provide a better customer experience. Full documentation
Support for Hybrid Mobile Apps and Web Views
We’re excited to offer monitoring support for Cordova-based applications and for WebViews running in native iOS and Android applications using a combination of our MRUM and BRUM agents so you can collect meaningful and actionable metrics. Full documentation
IoT Business Transaction Correlation through REST APIs and IoT SDKs
Correlate edge application events to your underlying backend applications using the IoT REST API and SDK for more extensive visibility into your IoT devices. Business transaction correlations will show up as part of the Activity Stream for each device through its entire life so you can better understand how your application is performing. Full documentation
Generic Cluster Support
This release provides enhanced support for database clusters, including Master/Slave technologies and sharded architectures. You can define a single collector configuration to monitor multiple database instances, treating them like one entity, allowing for a better visualization within the UI. Full documentation
Support for Couchbase
Use AppDynamics Database Visibility to remotely monitor your Couchbase clusters without any component or code modifications. Monitor N1QL queries on all database activity and review historical time-series graphs of time spent in Couchbase (supplemented by underlying database-specific metrics) to proactively identify and resolve performance issues. Full documentation
Custom Query Metrics Enhancements
Scale your custom queries for deeper insight into your database with several new features, like scheduling and bulk add activities. Using the new Custom Metrics tab in the Dashboard view, you’ll see data trends faster without having to create custom dashboards. Test custom queries before creating them, saving you time debugging errors later. These are just a few of the recent additions! Full documentation
Generic Snapshot Correlation
With generic snapshot correlation, we’ll attempt to match and tag business transactions and snapshot identifiers to database visibility data to provide a better integration across your entire solution. The new Database Queries tab on the Business Transaction dashboard displays correlated queries and database data directly in your APM Dashboard for a more comprehensive dataset. Full documentation
Dynamic Monitoring Mode (DMM) for all Docker Visibility Metrics
Turn on Dynamic Monitoring Mode (DMM) for a richer set of metrics when diagnosing a specific issue, such as spikes on CPU load. You have the flexibility of configuring individual agents to collect KPI metrics, KPI and Diagnostic metrics, or all available metrics to ensure you’re capturing the most important information while conserving metric bandwidth. Full documentation
Additional Docker Metrics
You can enable additional Docker metrics from the DMM drop-down menu to examine how your containers are performing and diagnose issues as needed. Newly available metrics include CPU %Busy scaled, incoming/outgoing KB and KB/sec, incoming/outgoing packets and packets dropped, and disk metrics for certain platforms. Full documentation
Support for OpenShift
Server Visibility's Integrated Docker Visibility is available for applications deployed using OpenShift v3. You can collect performance data from Openshift clusters using the Machine Agent and display Kubernetes metadata and tags in the Controller. Full documentation
Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) KPI Dashboard
The PCF KPI Dashboard enables you to monitor the performance of a PCF platform on which an AppDynamics tile is running. This dashboard uses a set of custom Health Rules and metrics to visualize PCF performance metrics and capacity-scaling indicators in a single location. Full documentation
Network Visibility for Docker Containers
Monitor traffic for application nodes running inside Docker containers with the Network Agent so you can collect detailed metrics, identify areas where network issues are occuring, and identify root cause of performance issues. Full documentation
Cross Application Flows
Drill down into the Network Dashboard to see TCP metrics for calls across applications and take advantage of an updated visual convention that better represents TCP endpoints when analyzing a flowmap. Full documentation
Transaction Snapshot Support for Network Analysis
Troubleshoot network issues more efficiently by getting network context directly from transaction snapshots. You can right-click on a flow in the Snapshot Overview and select “View Network Metrics” to see performance-impacting events and possible correlating factors. Full documentation
Business Journey Authoring Enhancements
You now have immediate access to the representations of business journeys and corresponding milestones with new out of the box dashboards. You can use out of the box critical metrics like average end-to-end time to create health rules and understand how your business is performing. We’ve also added a single-click “Search” option to the Business Journey dashboard so you can access relevant data faster and reduce MTTR. Full documentation
Visibility into XLM data and XLM Time Zone Support
Perform compliance calculations and generate reports in your desired time zone instead of experience and service levels in UTC. You can also export XLM reports containing compliance and events data in CSV format for easy reporting. Full documentation
Export Improvements
We've expanded the analytics export capability by increasing the number of rows that can be exported to CSV to 65,000 in order to match standard file sizes and present you with more information at once. Full documentation
Business Metrics Enhancements
The Metric Listing page has been updated to provide a more intuitive experience. Click on a metric name to open a pre-populated Metric Browser, select multiple metrics to view them together in the Metric Browser for comparison, or add metrics to the dashboard from the Metric Listing page. The page now displays the underlying ADQL query for metrics, making it easy to see what a particular metric represents and how it is calculated. You can also enable and disable multiple metrics simultaneously from the toolbar. Full documentation
Additional ADQL Clauses and Functions
New ADQL operators empower more sophisticated aggregation and filtering. Use the HAVING clause to return rows filtered on aggregated conditions (e.g., values with an average response time greater than 30 ms), or totalResultsCount() to return the total count of events before being divided up by different dimensions. For querying specific points in time not tied to the UI based time picker, use the SINCE... and UNTIL.. clauses (e.g,. transactions on 5/18/18). Full documentation on the HAVING clause, totalResultsCount(), and SINCE...and UNTIL clauses
Widget Enhancements
Enhancements to our widgets options enable more precise widget customization to create more visually appealing dashboards and make it easier to interpret trends in your event data. You can edit widgets in less time with the new multi-widget editing option. We’ve added a log axis for time series widgets to compare values with differences in the order of magnitudes. You can also hide legends options that are unnecessary. Our numeric (univariate) widgets can now display the level of numeric specificity in numeric widgets to see the information that’s most important to you, and a trailing period value comparison indicator makes it easy to understand how your key metrics are changing. Full documentation on visualizing analytics, creating widgets, and widget operations
Comprehensive Audit Logging and Reports
Our enhanced audit report makes it easier to see and filter details about state changes, including the exact change, the previous state, and who performed the change, for a number of different entities. You can also export the audit report as a CSV or JSON so you can slice-and-dice data based on what you’re most interested in analyzing. Full documentation
Data Privacy and Collection
We’ve made several additions to make data collection details more accessible. The Data Collection Dashboard lets you view all of your current data privacy collection settings in a unified view, making it easier to keep track of all of your configurations. For regulatory purposes, a Data Collection Privacy dialog will appear when you are configuring parts of the AppDynamic product to remind you that the change could impact the collection of regulated information. Full documentation on the Data Collection Dashboard and Data Collection Privacy Dialog
Support for Major-Version Upgrades for the Enterprise Console
You can now manage and upgrade multiple Controllers and Events Services on different versions from one Enterprise Console, providing more flexibility when upgrading production, UT, staging, and dev platform services. Full documentation
Rest API Authentication
Maximize your security profile in the form of token-based authentication. You can create and use API Clients to provide secure access to the Controller through REST API calls, which use OAuth token-based authentication instead of credentials. These signed or encrypted tokens can be refreshed or revoked at any time. Full documentation
Create Events Permission
We’re supporting more granular role creation across product lines to provide better consistency and control over who can complete different tasks across the AppDynamics product line. In 4.5, you can assign the new Create Events permission to custom roles so employees can create custom events without needing administrative rights. Full documentation
Additional Resources
