Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension to help you to fine-tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the Controller. Workbench functionality is inbuilt with each extension JAR file.
Currently, the AppDynamics Platform does not allow a user to delete a metric once it has been registered. As soon as you deploy an extension directly after downloading, it will have several default settings.
If you wanted to make a minor change, say in the metricPrefix
of the extension, after you deployed it with the default configuration, the platform would not allow you to delete the metrics with the default metricPrefix
and you would have to keep the old metrics as well.
This useful feature should be used during the process of deploying each extension, since it will give you a better idea of what metrics will be recorded. If you see that you are missing some metrics, this tool will give you an opportunity to add those metrics as well.
In order to use Extensions Workbench, follow these steps:
- Following the instructions on Cisco DevNet, build the specific extension's ZIP file and place it in the
monitors
folder.

- In the terminal, navigate to the extension folder.

- Verify that you have the main extension JAR file.

- Navigate to the extension folder that contains the jar file and execute the following command to start Workbench mode:
java -jar cassandra-monitoring-extension.jar
NOTE | Workbench by default uses port 9090. If you would like to change that to another port, use the following structure to build your command: java -jar <extension-jar> <host> <port>
- If you see the following output in the terminal, this means that it worked correctly and you have officially started Workbench Mode.

- Now, open your browser and navigate to
http://localhost:9090/
. This starts the HTTP server that allows you to access the Workbench Mode.
- Verify that all the desired metrics are present. Remove any unwanted metrics from the
config.yml
file to reduce noise.
- As you explore the map of metrics, you can see if you are getting a valid output on the graph on right. The metrics that are listed in the
config.yml
are the ones that are shown on the Workbench.

- Once you are satisfied with the metrics and their values that are received, stop the current process and start the Machine Agent to view the metrics being reported on the metric browser.