AppDynamics not detecting standalone windows service

[Ronald.Weng]

Hi everyone

I have two issues I have to deal with:

1. Is it possible to configure a standalone application (Windows Service) that has a dynamic folder to the location of the application?

i.e

If I deploy my application today (2018.04.16) the application is placed in an folder where the agent configuration (config.xml) will look like:

      <standalone-application executable="c:\programs\mywindowsservice2018.04.16\mywindowsservice.exe">
         <tier name="Windows Service Tier" />
      </standalone-application> 

If I decide to redeploy the application due to some code changes next month, the folder will become

c:\programs\mywindowsservice2018.05.21\mywindowsservice.exe

The documentation only mentions about partial folders but nothing about using wildcards

https://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO44/Configure+the+.NET+Agent+for+Windows+Services+and+Standal...

2. To make matters worse, the executable name stated above is shared with multiple other applications distingushed by the folder name:

i.e 

c:\programs\mysecondwindowsservice2018.05.21\mywindowsservice.exe

c:\programs\mythirdwindowsservice2018.05.21\mywindowsservice.exe

[Raunak.Mohanty]

Hi,

  If the name of the executable remains same after each deployment then you can always give just to executable name. If multiple instances of the same executable ( from different paths) can run then you can distinguish them using command line arguments. Otherwise, all instances will get identified and report to dynamically identified node names.

Thanks,

Raunak

[Ronald.Weng]

Hi Raunak

Thanks for the reply, how do you uniquely distinguish the different applications using these arguments?

What I'm seeing now is all the applications on the dashboard are grouped into a Tier with the name I specified, but the nodes are named: mywindowsservice, mywindowsservice-1, mywindowsservice-2

[Raunak.Mohanty]

Hi,

Do these nodes represent different Windows Services ?

Thanks,
Raunak

[Ronald.Weng]

Yes

They are different applications but with the same executable names... 

[Raunak.Mohanty · Accepted solution]

Hi,

  In case you are passing different arguments to these executables then you can differentiate based on that. Just right click on the Windows Services at Services.msc and verify if that is the case

<standalone-application executable="MyWindowsService.exe" command-line="<Arugument"">
           <tier name="Windows Service Tier" />
        </standalone-application>
        <standalone-application executable="MyStandaloneApp.exe">
           <tier name="Standalone Tier" />
        </standalone-application>

Thanks,

Raunak 

[Ronald.Weng]

Thanks Raunak

Seems like I can do the following:

      <standalone-application executable="mywindowsservice.exe" command-line="myapplication1">
         <tier name="Windows Service Tier 1" />
      </standalone-application> 

      <standalone-application executable="mywindowsservice.exe" command-line="myapplication2">
         <tier name="Windows Service Tier 2" />
      </standalone-application> 

      <standalone-application executable="mywindowsservice.exe" command-line="myapplication3">
         <tier name="Windows Service Tier 3" />
      </standalone-application> 

but for some weird behaviour on the applciation dashboard it's grouping one of the apps into the another tier instead of creating a separate tier as specified

i.e it does

mywindowsservice-1 -> Windows Service Tier 1

mywindowsservice-2 -> Windows Service Tier 2

mywindowsservice-3 -> Windows Service Tier 1