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Hello AppD Community,   We’re happy to announce our new series where we learn more about each other as AppDynamics Community members.    Introducing Mario Morelli, (Sales Engineer, DevCon) as our first Community Member Spotlight. Mario’s thoughtful engagement and helpful responses to questions has enhanced our Community.   Without further ado, here’s our conversation with Mario. Please feel free to add your  comments and questions for Mario below. We look forward to hearing from you!    – Ryan & Claudia    Table of Contents A day in the life of Mario.Morelli Why participate in Community? Keeping up with Technology Trends Inspiration   Mario.Morelli, Sales Engineer at DevCon A day in the life of Mario.Morelli Can you give us a picture of “a day in the life”?  Currently my role is broken down into 2 separate streams.   My primary function is as part of an AppDynamics Partner team rolling out AppDynamics to a big Telecoms customer in South Africa. My role is comprised of being both a Solutions Architect, and the technical lead for this project’s rollout.    We recently adopted an Agile approach into the customer environment, hence we have our Daily standups, do sprint planning and engage with Stakeholders on prioritizing the rollouts across the Company. The day’s main workload includes having Technical Sessions, rolling out AppDynamics Agents, creating Solutions, and providing ongoing demos and so forth to provide value to the Customer. The other part of my role as a SE with an AppDynamics partner is to conduct POV’s with potential new clients.   How did you get involved with this work? Initially my first job was working 3-4 kilometers underground in a gold mine, and barely had any IT experience. I had no idea I would end up in this line of work 🙂 😊 😊 . I then got the chance for an internship at an IT company to train in Performance/Load Testing.    The internship grew and I took on other products within the HP (Now MicroFocus) suite of products, ranging from APM, into IT Operations & Service Management, and even into Network Monitoring.   I did the full stack of products across the IT lifecycle for the last 10 years. Just over a year ago, I had the opportunity to join an AppDynamics partner as a Sales Engineer.   What feeds your interest in your work? Every day is different and brings with it its own challenges. I prefer this over a standard 9-5 day doing the same over and over. Also, in our line of work we get to solve many organisational problems—which even after stressful deadlines and workload, makes it all worth it   What has kept me greatly interested in staying on this path, is that in using software like AppDynamics., you get to engage with all levels within organisations and are exposed to a variety of different software, people and businesses.   This has been extremely helpful in better understanding organisations’ processes and difficulties, and in engaging more efficiently to help them solve their problems. Why participate in Community?  What first brought you to the AppD community? Initially, it was while trying to figure out some agent problems I was having. I also did a lot of work with my previous company’s community.   There is great value in having a well organised and engaging community. Most members learn from each other and gain knowledge that would otherwise not be shared.   Can you tell us about a positive experience you’ve had with the community? I had the pleasure of assisting a couple of people in the community and also found some Knowledge Base articles which I could put to use in my daily work.   Also the moderator team is very active and I can see value in the regular updates, keeping the community informed about AppDynamics.   How do you use AppD in your role? We mainly deploy and manage AppDynamics for customers. One use case we’ve implemented occurs more often than you would think.    We usually get documentation and architecture of User Journeys and we map them out accordingly in AppDynamics. What we have found is that some customers are under a false impression that they fully understand how their supporting applications interact to support their Business Services, end-2-end.    Customers start using AppDynamics to assist them in documenting and understanding their Application flows and communication between components. This saves them significant time in documenting and visualizing their Business Journey.   What are your top 2 AppDynamics hot tips? My first tip would be to get immersed in the technology and get as much hands-on experience using AppDynamics and the value you can get out of it. In today’s digital environment, you don’t need to wait for customer environments to instrument applications for the first time.    You can download and install most applications and get used to how they work and how to Instrument using AppDynamics. This gives you a head start as well as making implementation easier once you get to customer sites.   In this sense, you can become as great as you can want to be and become an expert in AppDynamics in the comfort of your own home :-). 😊   Secondly, I would advise Implementers and users of AppDynamics to stick to the KISS principle, "keep it simple, stupid". And also to engage and keep your stakeholders close to the implementation to build the APM journey with them. Enabling and guiding them will keep AppDynamics with them for years to come.     Technology What’s your best way of keeping up with industry news? I mostly use Twitter, Reddit & LinkedIn to keep up with what’s occurring in the APM area, as well as other Tech sectors. I try to make time on a bi-weekly basis to catch up on what's been happening and attend worthwhile Webexes and online conferences.   What have you learned in the past year that you wish you had known when you started your career? Definitely to keep a close eye on not trying to do too much at once. Focus on the important things and plan ahead better to where you want to be in a couple of years. That failure is part of growing and also to surround yourself with the right people that help you grow, is very important.    Is there anything you’d like to shout out or elevate? Just a big thank you to everyone that has been part of my journey over the last 12 years and to everyone that gave me a chance to learn and grow. I would not have been where I am today without some great mentors and colleagues.     Inspiration What are some of your favorite things to experience outside of work? Well we do live in South Africa, so we definitely enjoy having a Braai (What you would call a barbeque) weekly, with some drinks and friends, enjoying the Rugby games.   We have a beautiful country, and we like to explore something new regularly from visiting game parks, to new beaches, mountains and so much more.   Also something we do is to go to the track to push your car to the limit, and get some adrenaline going.   How—or where—do you find inspiration? I have always had a never-ending need for knowledge and I enjoy solving problems. It gives me a great deal of enjoyment to deliver value and solve organisational problems, using whichever method is at my disposal.  I want to grow to a place where I can utilize my knowledge and travel all over the world to work in many places and meet other professionals to learn and grow from.   What advice would you give someone who is up and coming in your field of work? I would say, find a good mentor and learn as much as you can. Constantly push yourself to grow and never wait for anyone to better yourself. Your future is in your hands and you need to guide yourself to where you want to be. ... View more

  Watch this space for updates. Want to be notified when new product updates are posted? Learn how to subscribe here .    In August, we released the v20.8.0 Controller and Enterprise Console as well as key product enhancements and agent updates. We also resolved a series of issues associated with the previous release.   Tabl e of Contents Feature Enhancements Heads Up - What Else You Should Know Beta Programs Resolved Issues Get Started Ask a Question   What highlights should I know about? These release highlights include the newest features and capabilities at-a-glance this month. In the grid below, we’ve flagged who may be most interested or impacted in your organization by each enhancement.   Category Enhancement  User and Performance Analyst Admin and Implementer Developer Cloud Native Kubernetes Pod Drill-Down Enhancements   ✓ ✓ Lambda Enhancements   ✓ ✓ AIOps Platform Action Suppressions   ✓   Database Agent Update ✓ ✓   SAP Monitoring Enhancement ✓   ✓ Ease of Use Dash Studios Updates ✓ ✓   System Admin Access to Download from Account Page ✓ ✓   Cloud Native We have deepened our Kubernetes troubleshooting capabilities , allowing users to drill down from health problems on the dashboard to the relevant underlying events. (Released August 26, 2020) We have improved the troubleshooting capabilities of our AWS Lambda agent to have parity with our other APM agents, including monitoring functions written in Python . These additional capabilities include improving coldstart times and avoiding event loss at startup, making improvements to the CI/CD pipeline and ensuring tracer APIs can support provisioned concurrency. (Released August 27, 2020)   AIOps Platform You can now create, or edit existing, action suppressions rules to support recurring scenarios. (Released August  27, 2020) We have streamlined the debugging process for our database agent , by allowing you to download log files and thread dumps, as well as report on telemetry information directly from the user interface. (Released August 27, 2020) We have introduced Business iQ (BiQ) to our SAP monitoring capabilities , correlating how SAP performance impacts the business metrics associated with SAP business scenarios (like Order-to-Cash processes). (Released August 17th, 2020)   Ease of Use Dash Studio now supports dashboards reflecting error rates, database/remote services, events and event lists. (Released August 31, 2020 )    System Admin Updates With access to Downloadable artifacts from your Account page , users can download artifacts without visiting the Downloads page . There is no impact to your CI/CD pipeline or any automation you may have implemented. Read the FAQ here to learn more. (Ongoing release started in June 2020)   Heads up – What else you should know  As of August 2020, AppDynamics Java users no longer need to choose between dynamic instrumentation and performance when running on IBM JVM. The newer releases for Java 8 don't exhibit the same performance penalty when class retransformation is enabled. Find out more here . AppDynamics received FedRAMP authorization at the moderate impact level in June 2020. If you are a government customer and are interested in leveraging the FedRAMP authorized SaaS solution, learn more and get in touch  here .  Your AppDynamics Certification exams have moved! Beginning on July 28, 2020, the AppDynamics Certifications Program is transitioning to a new process for candidates that is temporarily independent of our new AppDynamics U niversity experience. This is the first step in a longer-term, multi-stage migration plan as our platforms evolve and we strive to provide you with more effective services. If you have previously received a registration confirmation for your exam, please see How to register for and access AppDynamics certification exams.   Share your feedback! Participate in a Beta today We’re currently running three Beta programs and looking for your feedback:   Sign up for our Mobile App Beta program . We’re redesigning the AppDynamics Mobile App to provide users 24/7 access to powerful performance insights, on-the-go. Submit feedback on the Dash Studio Preview through the in-product feedback button or on Community here .   Resolved Issues The following list notes key issues that were resolved this month. To see a complete listing of this month's resolved issues, see Resolved Issues by Month .   Controller The Controller does not display any data when you open the Metric Browser for the first time (DBMON-7111) The Controller upgrade no longer fails using Windows version (ECONSOLE06083) MDS connection pools no longer ignore JDBC parameters in domain.xml (METADATA-9384) Controller changes made all reports fail if any had scheduling fails on startup (REPORTS-791) Time changes randomly in the "Custom Time" range component (TMNT-720)   Dashboard and Health Status Upon clicking the ”View Dashboard During Health Rule Violation" for a BT, you are redirected to a non-existing entity with the id "-1" (ALERT-6761) When you access a health rule using the health status widget on the dashboard, Application with id:-1 does not exist error is displayed (ALERT-6860)   Get Started   Please note: customers are advised to check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation .    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 Extensions AppDynamics is switching to calendar versioning, Why? License Entitlements and Restrictions   Can’t find what you’re looking for? Need more assistance? Ask a question in the Latest Release forum. ... View more

Table of Contents Feature Enhancements Heads Up - What Else You Should Know Beta Programs Resolved Issues Get Started Ask a Question   In early June, we released the v20.6.0 Controller and Enterprise Console as well as key product enhancements and agent updates. We also resolved a series of issues associated with the previous release.   Want to be notified when new product updates are posted? Learn how to subscribe here.   What highlights should I know about? These release highlights include the newest features and capabilities at-a-glance this month. In the grid below, we’ve flagged who may be most interested or impacted in your organization by each enhancement.   Category Enhancement User and Performance Analyst Admin and Implementer Developer Cloud Native Kubernetes Enhancement     ✓ IPM App Connect Enterprise Support (formerly IIB)   ✓ ✓ Ease of Use Database Monitoring Re-design ✓ ✓   Support EUM (BRUM, MRUM) App Metrics in Dash Studio ✓ ✓ ✓ Cisco Workload Optimization Manager (CWOM) ✓ ✓   System Admin Updates   Access to Downloads from Account   ✓   University Subscription Management   ✓     Cloud Native With our Kubernetes Cluster Agent enhancement , we now give visibility into Container Name, ID and Stateful Sets in Events and Inventory. We now support IBM APP Connect Enterprise Support (ACE) V11 on AIX to ensure we are up-to-date with the latest frameworks and versions. ACE is formally known as IBM Integration Bus (IIB) .   Ease of Use The database monitoring redesign creates a unified, relevant and well-documented setup experience making it quicker and easier to configure the settings that meet your needs. JMX Data Binding in Dash Studio :  Visualize performance metrics for JMX Objects through Dash Studio's widgets, including time series. With our recent ServiceNow Integration, records of Cisco Workload Optimization Manager (CWOM) decisions will be automatically created in ServiceNow. CWOM will also provide VDI environments with unprecedented performance, scale and density to provide Virtual User Desktops with their required resources for optimal customer experiences. CWOM can also now make scaling decisions that assure the optimal use of Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances, maximizing RI coverage and utilization while assuring application and virtual machine performance.   System Administration Downloads: To provide a more seamless experience, users can download artifacts directly from their Account page beginning in June 2020. There is no impact to your CI/CD pipeline or any automation you may have implemented, the Downloads page (downloads.appdynamics.com) remains intact. Read the FAQ here to learn more. University Licensing Provisioning: In June, we improved the AppDynamics University experience so Company Administrators can more easily manage subscription and University subscribers. Learn more about managing University subscriptions here and check out AppDynamics University. NOTE : These Download and AppDynamics University features are our latest steps in expanding the Accounts experience for a more streamlined user experience.   Heads up - What else you should know  AppDynamics received FedRAMP authorization at the moderate impact level in June 2020. If you are a government customer and are interested in leveraging the FedRAMP authorized SaaS solution, learn more and get in touch here.    Share your feedback! Participate in a Beta today We’re currently running two Beta programs and looking for your feedback:   Submit feedback on the Dash Studio Preview through the in-product feedback button or on Community here Sign up for the Beta program for our Lambda Python Serverless Tracer and learn more about our capabilities on the Serverless APM for AWS Lambda page . The tracer's language matches your AWS function code's implementation.   Resolved Issues The following list notes key issues that were resolved this month. To see a complete of this month's resolved issues, see  Resolved Issues by Month .   Account "Reset Password" field is disabled (L4A-11678)  Email alerts stop because of a notification configuration (L4A-12167) LDAP sync fails while updating user outside of session¬† (L4A-12510)   Controller Roles with view permission can disable analytics for the application (ANALYTICS-12454)       The succeeded pod count includes the number of deleted pods on the Pods page (CLUSTERMON-1257) Cluster agent pod is not created if MustRunAsNonRoot security policy is in place (CLUSTERMON-1631)       Controller upgrade from 4.5.x to 20.3 no longer fails with MySQL upgrade version (ECONSOLE-5906) Service Availability is vulnerable to Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) (SERVER-7621)   Database Monitoring Collectors display multiple nodes with the same name when creating a health rule (DBMON-4676)  The Network Dashboard flowmap does not display the backend nodes of database (DBMON-6628) The ‘Connect backends to Database Visibility to track health status’ message gets displayed every time, even when not required (DB6718)        20.4 - syd-p-con-1: Missing DB backend nodes in Network Dashboard Flowmap  (DBMON-6641)        Agent is reporting its own monitoring query for MongoDB (DBMON-6805) The Database Agent fails to monitor Oracle version 11 (DBMON-7037)   EUM Cloud Update the Neustar map library to correct geodata (EUMPLAT-601)       Metrics missing intermittently due to a SocketTimeoutException when EUM tries to download metrics (EUMPLAT-776)     Machine Agent Machine agent spawning lot of awk commands which result in exhaustion of system resources (SERVER-6143)   UI When you open an Event UI and re-load the background UI, the refreshed background UI display is distorted (ALERT-5349)                                                                                  Widgets not added to dashboards if the auto-save option is not selected (ANALYTICS-12500)    The 'Connect backends to Database Visibility to track health status' message is displayed every time even when it is not required. (DBMON-6718)   Get Started   Note: customers are advised to check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation.    Download Essential Components (Agents, Enterprise Console, Controller (on-prem), Events Service, EUM Components) Download Additional Components (SDKs, Plugins, etc.) AppDynamics Upgrade Checklist For Any Release Product Announcements, Alerts, and Hot Fixes Extensions AppDynamics is switching to calendar versioning, Why? License Entitlements and Restrictions   Can’t find what you’re looking for? Need more assistance? Ask a question in the Latest Release forum. ... View more

  Watch this space for updates. Want to be notified when new product updates are posted? Learn how to subscribe here .    In July, we released the v20.7.0 and 20.7.1 Controller and Enterprise Console as well as key product enhancements and agent updates. We also resolved a series of issues associated with the previous release.   Please note: customers are advised to check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation .    Tabl e of Contents Feature Enhancements Heads Up - What Else You Should Know Beta Programs Resolved Issues Get Started Ask a Question   What highlights should I know about? These release highlights include the newest features and capabilities at-a-glance this month. In the grid below, we’ve flagged who may be most interested or impacted in your organization by each enhancement.   Category Enhancement  User and Performance Analyst Admin and Implementer Developer Cloud Native PHP Agent Update ✓   ✓ Cluster Agent – Auto-Instrumentation for Java applications ✓   ✓ AIOps Platform Application Analytics ✓   ✓ Ease of Use On-premises Availability for Experience Journey Maps ✓   ✓ Effortless BRUM Agent Configuration   ✓ ✓ System Admin Updates Alerting Templates ✓ ✓   Alert Sensitivity Tuning ✓ ✓   Access to Download from Account Page   ✓     Cloud Native The PHP Agent 20.7.0 release enhances the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance for data filtering. This helps you to redact any sensitive data (URLs, Exit calls, or cookies), which is shown in the Controller. (Released July 16, 2020) With our latest release of the Cluster Agent , you can now take advantage of APM auto-instrumentation for your Java applications, deployed using the DeploymentConfig resource. (Released July 24, 2020) AIOps Platform Application Analytics The End User Monitoring (EUM) filter has been added to the Analytics Home page with options to display browser and mobile sessions.  (Released July 16, 2020)   Ease of Use On-premises availability for Experience Journey Maps (ExJM). ExJM provides a detailed view into users’ most trafficked journeys through your application and insight into performance, user abandonment, and mobile and browser errors - at every step of the user journey. (Released July 16, 2020) Improved BRUM Agent Configuration for simpler and effortless setup. (Released July 16, 2020)   System Admin Updates You can now export a configured alerting template and save it for later use, as well as import a previously saved template and apply it to your applications. (Released July 16, 2020) Alert Sensitivity Tuning allows you to fine-tune the sensitivity configurations of your health rules to better define and evaluate the metric expression. (Released July 16, 2020) With access to Downloadable artifacts from your Account page , users can download artifacts without visiting the Downloads page . There is no impact to your CI/CD pipeline or any automation you may have implemented. Read the FAQ here to learn more. (Ongoing release started in June 2020)   Heads up – What else you should know  AppDynamics received FedRAMP authorization at the moderate impact level in June 2020. If you are a government customer and are interested in leveraging the FedRAMP authorized SaaS solution, learn more and get in touch here .  Your AppDynamics Certification exams have moved! Beginning on July 28, 2020, the AppDynamics Certifications Program is transitioning to a new process for candidates. Temporarily, the process is independent of our new AppDynamics University experience. This is the first step in a longer-term, multi-stage migration plan as our platforms evolve and we strive to provide you with more effective services. If you’ have previously received a registration confirmation for your exam, please see How to register for and access AppDynamics certification exams.   Share your feedback! Participate in a Beta today We’re currently running two Beta programs and looking for your feedback: Sign up for our Mobile App Beta program . We’re redesigning the AppDynamics Mobile App to provide users 24/7 access to powerful performance insights, on-the-go.  Submit feedback on the Dash Studio Preview through the in-product feedback button or on Community here.   Resolved Issues The following list notes key issues that were resolved this month. To see a complete of this month's resolved issues, see Resolved Issues by Month .   Analytics BO definition in a draft state with duplicate names will loop forever in UI (ANALYTICS-12263)   Authentication Encountered LDAP sync failure while updating user outside Hibernate session (L4A-12447)   Controller The Pods tab does not display the pod list after the re-registration of the Cluster Agent (CLUSTERMON-1358) The Network Dashboard flow map does not display the backend nodes of the database (DBMON-66280) (20.4 - syd-p-con-1:) Missing DB backend nodes in Network Dashboard Flowmap (DBMON-6641) Snapshots are not loaded, 500 Internal Server Error is displayed (DIAGPLAT-807)   User Interface When you open an Event UI and re-load the background UI, the refreshed background UI display is distorted (ALERT-5349) Remove Alerting Template RBAC constraints (ALERT-6028) The¬†Connect backends to Database Visibility to track health status¬†message is displayed even when it’s not required (DBMON-6529)   Get Started   Please note: customers are advised to check backward compatibility in the Agent and Controller Compatibility documentation .    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 Extensions AppDynamics is switching to calendar versioning, Why? License Entitlements and Restrictions   Can’t find what you’re looking for? Need more assistance? Ask a question in the Latest Release forum. ... View more