500-430 Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer(CAPI) Questions and Answers

An Events Service cluster is a group of two or more Events Service nodes that work together to store and process unstructured data generated by AppDynamics components such as Application Analytics, Database Visibility, and End User Monitoring1. Using an Events Service cluster has two main advantages over a single-node instance12:

• Clusters allow data replication across multiple nodes. This means that the data is duplicated and distributed among the nodes in the cluster, providing data redundancy and protection against data loss in case of a node failure. Data replication also improves data availability and query performance, as the cluster can handle concurrent requests from multiple clients.
• Clusters are horizontally scalable by adding nodes. This means that the cluster can grow in size and capacity by adding more nodes to the cluster, without affecting the existing nodes or data. Horizontal scaling allows the cluster to handle increasing data volumes and performance demands, as well as balance the workload among the nodes. References: Events Service Deployment, What are the Benefits of Server Clustering?

The AppDynamics Controller Admin Console lets you configure certain global settings for the Controller, such as metric retention periods, UI notification triggers, tenancy mode, and accounts in multi-tenancy mode1. Two of the settings that an administrator can configure from the AppDynamics Controller Admin Console are:

• License allocation: This setting allows you to view and manage the license usage and availability for your Controller. You can see the total number of licenses, the number of licenses in use, the number of licenses available, and the license expiration date for each agent type. You can also allocate licenses to specific applications or accounts, and set license limits and alerts2.
• Retention periods: This setting allows you to specify how long the Controller retains the metric data and the event data for your monitored applications. You can configure the retention periods for different types of data, such as minute-level metrics, hour-level metrics, day-level metrics, transaction snapshots, and events. You can also configure the data purge schedule and the data backup schedule3.

References: Access the Administration Console, License Rules, Data Retention

To upgrade the AppDynamics Java Agent, you need to copy the existing agent directory to a backup location and replace it with the new agent directory. You also need to copy any configuration file changes made in the old directory to the new agent directory. After that, you need to restart the application JVM where the Java Agent is installed, so that the new agent can take effect. Restarting the application JVM is the only required step for the upgrade to succeed. You do not need to restart the host machine, the Machine Agent, or the AppDynamics Controller12. References: Upgrade the Java Agent, Release Upgrade Checklist for Java Agents

The Health Rule REST API allows you to create, configure, update, and delete health rules for multiple applications simultaneously. To use this API, you need to specify the application in the URL string. You can use either the application ID or the application name for this purpose. The application ID is a unique numeric identifier for each application in the Controller. The application name is the display name of the application in the AppDynamics UI. You cannot use the application alias, GUID, or REGEX for the Health Rule REST API. References: Health Rule API and Retrieve All Business Applications in the AppDynamics documentation.

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (CAPI) documents, the two valid ways to confirm that the upgraded Java Agent is running successfully are:

• Verify that the node within the Controller UI indicates the app agent is reporting. (B) This is a valid way because the Controller UI is a web-based application that allows users to monitor and manage the performance of the applications, tiers, nodes, and other entities that are instrumented by the AppDynamics agents. The Controller UI displays the status of the nodes within each tier, and indicates whether the app agent is reporting or not. If the app agent is reporting, the node icon is green and shows the agent version. If the app agent is not reporting, the node icon is gray and shows the last time the agent reported. The user can also hover over the node icon to see more details, such as the agent type, the agent version,the agent runtime directory, and the agent properties file. The user can verify that the upgraded Java Agent is running successfully by checking that the node icon is green and shows the latest agent version12.
• Verify the Java Agent Version metric for that node in the Metric Browser. © This is a valid way because the Metric Browser is a feature of the Controller UI that allows users to view and analyze the metrics collected by the AppDynamics agents. The Metric Browser displays the metrics in a hierarchical tree structure, where each node represents a metric category, a metric name, or a metric value. The user can expand or collapse the nodes, and select or deselect the metrics to view them in a chart. The user can also apply filters, time ranges, baselines, and other options to customize the chart. The user can verify that the upgraded Java Agent is running successfully by navigating to the Java Agent Version metric for that node in the Metric Browser. The Java Agent Version metric shows the version number of the Java Agent that is running on the node. The user can compare the metric value with the expected agent version, and check that the metric is updated after the upgrade34.

The incorrect options are:

• Verify that the application log contains a message indicating success. (A) This is not a valid way because the application log does not contain any message indicating the success of the Java Agent upgrade. The application log is a file that records the events and messages that occur in the application server, such as the startup, shutdown, errors, warnings, and debug information. The application log does not record the events and messages that occur in the Java Agent, such as the installation, upgrade, configuration, or reporting. The Java Agent has its own log file, which is located in the /logs directory, and which contains the messages indicating the success or failure of the Java Agent upgrade .
• Verify that the Java Agent log contains a message indicating the agent started successfully. (D) This is not a valid way because the Java Agent log does not contain any message indicating the agent started successfully after the upgrade. The Java Agent log is a file that records the events and messages that occur in the Java Agent, such as the installation, upgrade, configuration, or reporting. The Java Agent log contains a message indicating the agent started successfully when the application server is started, not when the Java Agent is upgraded. The Java Agent log does not contain any message indicating the success or failure of the Java Agent upgrade. The Java Agent log is located in the /logs directory, and the message indicating the agent started successfully is “Agent Startup Complete” .

References:

• 1: Tiers and Nodes - AppDynamics
• 2: Tier Dashboard - AppDynamics
• 3: Metric Browser - AppDynamics
• 4: Java Agent Metrics - AppDynamics
• [5]: Java Agent Logs - AppDynamics
• [6]: Troubleshoot the Java Agent - AppDynamics

Custom correlation is needed when the default detection mechanisms of AppDynamics are not capable of auto-correlating transactions across tiers or across parent-child threads in complex multithreaded applications. Custom correlation enables the user to configure AppDynamics to propagate a unique correlation key by using the extension points of the distributed protocol or by decorating the payload. Among the four options, a custom TCP concurrent server is the most likely to require the implementation of custom correlation, as it is an unsupported framework and protocol that may not have easily-defined method calls or payload objects to configure as exit points or entry points. The other options, such as SOAP, JMS, and WCF, are supported by AppDynamics and can be automatically correlated by the agents without the need for custom configuration. References: Custom Correlation for Java Applications and Configure Custom Correlation for .NET Applications in the AppDynamics community.

The AppDynamics REST API for retrieving metrics allows you to get values generated for metrics by specifying the path of the metric and the time frame for the data1. The following statements are true regarding this API12:

• Metrics can be retrieved for a fixed time range. You can use the time-range-type parameter to specify a fixed time range such as BEFORE_NOW, AFTER_TIME, or BETWEEN_TIMES. You can also use the duration-in-mins parameter to specify the length of the time range in minutes.
• Wildcards can be used in the REST API metric path. You can use the asterisk () character as a wildcard to match any metric name or part of a metric name. For example, you can use the metric path Business Transaction Performance|Business Transactions||*|Average Response Time (ms) to retrieve the average response time for all business transactions in all tiers. References: Retrieve Metric Data, Retrieve Metric Hierarchy

The AppDynamics Rest API to retrieve business transactions allows you to get a list of all business transactions in a business application, along with their key metrics and properties1. The correct URL format for this API is1:

• http(s) ://:/controller/rest/applications//business-transactions

The other options are incorrect because12:

• Option A uses an invalid endpoint /allbts, which does not exist in the API.
• Option C uses an incorrect base URL /controller/applications, which is used for the Controller UI, not the Rest API.
• Option D uses a misspelled endpoint /allbis, which does not exist in the API. References: Retrieve All Business Transactions in a Business Application, AppDynamics APIs

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (CAPI) documents, the recommended way to add capacity to the Events Service cluster is to add nodes running on machines with identical hardware matching the existing nodes12. This will increase the data storage, replication, and redundancy of the cluster, as well as the processing power for queries. The Events Service cluster is horizontally scalable, so nodes can be added as your data storage requirements grow32. The Events Service must run on dedicated machines with identical directory structures, user account profiles, and hardware profiles1. For heap space allocation, AppDynamics recommends allocating half of the available RAM to the Events Service process, with a minimum of 7 GB up to 31 GB1. Solid-state drives (SSD) can significantly outperform hard disk drives (HDD), and are therefore recommended for production deployments1.

The incorrect options are:

• Add a new Events Service cluster to share the load. (A) This is not recommended because it will create additional complexity and overhead for managing multiple clusters and routing data and queries to the appropriate cluster. It will also require more license units to enable analytics on multiple clusters.
• Add more storage to the master nodes of the cluster. © This is not recommended because it will not increase the data replication and redundancy of the cluster, nor the processing power for queries. It will also create an imbalance in the cluster, as the master nodes will have more storage than the worker nodes, which may affect the performance and stability of the cluster.
• Add more storage to as many of the existing nodes as possible. (D) This is not recommended because it will not increase the data replication and redundancy of the cluster, nor the processing power for queries. It will also create an imbalance in the cluster, as some nodes will have more storage than others, which may affect the performance and stability of the cluster.

References:

• 1: Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (500-430)
• 2: Events Service Requirements - AppDynamics
• 3: Events Service Deployment - AppDynamics
• 4: Events Service Deployment - AppDynamics

Before installing an AppDynamics Controller on Linux, you need to perform some preparatory tasks to ensure the system meets the requirements and the installation runs smoothly. Two of these tasks are:

• Install libaio on the host machine if it does not already have it installed. This library facilitates asynchronous I/O operations on the system, which are required by the Controller. You can use the package manager of your Linux distribution to install libaio, such as yum or apt-get. For example, on CentOS, you can run yum install libaio1.
• Verify that you have enough temporary (tmp) space available on the system, at least 1 GB. The Controller installation uses the tmp space to extract and install the software components. You can check the tmp space by running df -h /tmp2. If the tmp space is insufficient, you can either free up some space by deleting unnecessary files, or specify a different temporary directory for the installation by passing the -Djava.io.tmpdir parameter to the installer3.

Other preparatory tasks include verifying the user account permissions, configuring the virus scanners, installing the netstat network utility, and setting the file descriptor limit2. References: Prepare Linux for the Controller, Install the Controller on Linux, and [Controller System Requirements] in the AppDynamics documentation.

The AppDynamics standalone Machine Agent is a Java program that runs on a host machine and collects hardware and infrastructure metrics, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. The Machine Agent can also perform additional functions, such as:

• Acting as a forwarder for analytics events: The Machine Agent can be configured to forward business transaction, log, browser, mobile, and synthetic events from the application agents to the AppDynamics Events Service, which is a distributed, scalable data store for analytics data. The Machine Agent can also forward custom events from the SDK or API to the Events Service. This allows you to use the AppDynamics Analytics features, such as dashboards, queries, funnels, and metrics, to analyze the performance and behavior of your applications and users12.
• Starting an HTTP listener for custom metrics: The Machine Agent can be configured to start an HTTP listener that can receive custom metrics from external sources, such as scripts, tools, or other applications. The Machine Agent can then report these custom metrics to the AppDynamics Controller, where youcan view them in the Metric Browser or use them in health rules, policies, or dashboards. This allows you to monitor any aspect of your system that is not covered by the default Machine Agent metrics34.

The other statements are false because:

• B. The Machine Agent cannot send SNMP alerts. The Machine Agent can only receive SNMP traps from external sources and report them as events to the AppDynamics Controller. The AppDynamics Controller can send SNMP alerts to external systems based on health rule violations or events, but this is not a function of the Machine Agent5 .
• C. The Machine Agent cannot communicate with multiple AppDynamics Controllers. The Machine Agent can only communicate with one Controller at a time, which is specified in the controller-info.xml file in the agent configuration directory. If you want to monitor the same host machine with multiple Controllers, you need to install multiple Machine Agents on the same machine, each with a different Controller configuration and port number .
• D. The Machine Agent cannot restart itself if it goes down. The Machine Agent does not have a built-in mechanism to automatically restart itself in case of a failure or a crash. You need to use an external tool or script to monitor the Machine Agent process and restart it if necessary. Alternatively, you can use the AppDynamics Agent Installer to deploy the Machine Agent as a service, which can be configured to restart automatically on failure .

References: Analytics Agent, Analytics Data, HTTP Listener, Custom Metrics, SNMP Trap Alerting Integration, [SNMP Integration], [Machine Agent Configuration Properties], [Install the Machine Agent], [Agent Installer], [Start and Stop the Machine Agent]

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (CAPI) documents, the REST API for health rule violations allows you to retrieve information about the health rule violations that occurred in a specified time range for a given application1. You can use the REST API for health rule violations for the following valid reasons:

• For determining which actions have been executed (B): The REST API response includes the details of the actions that were triggered by the health rule violation, such as email, SMS, HTTP request, or custom action1. You can use this information to verify if the actions were executed successfully, or to troubleshoot any issues with the action execution.
• When searching for historical events ©: The REST API allows you to specify a custom time range for retrieving the health rule violations, such as BEFORE_TIME, AFTER_TIME, BETWEEN_TIMES, or BEFORE_NOW1. You can use this feature to search for historical events that occurred in the past, or to analyze the trends and patterns of the health rule violations over time.

The incorrect options are:

• For updating an AppDynamics dashboard (A): This is not a valid reason for using the REST API for health rule violations, because the AppDynamics dashboards already display the health rule violations that occurred in the selected time frame, along with the severity, status, affected entities, and actions2. You do not need to use the REST API to update the dashboard, as the dashboard is automatically refreshed with the latest data from the Controller.
• For sending emails (D): This is not a valid reason for using the REST API for health rule violations, because the REST API does not send emails directly. The REST API only returns the information about the health rule violations, and the actions that were triggered by them. If you want to send emails based on the health rule violations, you need to configure an email action in the health rule configuration, or use a custom action that invokes an external email service3.
• When pushing events to the Event Management System is NOT possible (E): This is not a valid reason for using the REST API for health rule violations, because the REST API does not push events to the Event Management System. The REST API only returns the information about the health rule violations, and the actions that were triggered by them. If you want to push events to the Event Management System, you need to configure an HTTP request action in the health rule configuration, or use a custom action that invokes an external API3.

References:

• 1: Health Rule Violations API - AppDynamics
• 2: Health Rule Violations - AppDynamics
• 3: Actions - AppDynamics