Server Tagging

Use Server Tagging to query, filter, and compare related servers using custom metadata. You can tag related servers based on OS, location, tier, owner, or any other relevant criteria. Server tags provide additional context to server metrics.

For example, you may want to specify deployment-version tags to the servers in a specific cluster, and then use those tags to identify anomalies in server metrics during a new deployment. 

Server Tagging requires a Server Visibility license. Server Tagging is currently available for Linux, Windows, and Solaris. 

Server Visibility can import the tags (described in the table) automatically.

View Servers by Tag in the Controller UI

To view filter servers by tag in the Servers list, select Filters and add the criteria you want for the tag filter. If you specify multiple criteria, the filter performs an AND search (for criteria with different keys) and an OR search (for criteria with the same key). This example shows the tag criteria filters for all servers with:

1. A Tier tag that equals ECommWeb OR ECommInventory, AND
2. An OS Architecture tag that equals x86_64.

After you import custom tags using Custom Tagging APIs, you may observe latency in viewing user-defined tags.

Define and View Tags for a Server

You can specify server tags as a set of key-value strings in the Agent config directory. Each Agent can support up to 50 tags by default.

Follow these suggested best practices to define server tags:

If an Agent is deployed in Amazon Web Services, the Agent can auto-detect and import tags defined in AWS. The Controller also auto-assigns a set of default tags to each server.
The primary use case for server tags is to specify information that is not already specified in AWS and auto-assigned tags. Before you specify server tags in the Agent config directory, you should review the current set of tags. Access the Server Dashboard and view the Tags pane at the bottom of the page:

Be careful not to define duplicate tags in the YML file.

Import Tags from Amazon Web Services

Detailed information about Amazon Web Services is outside the scope of Cisco AppDynamics documentation.

Before Server Visibility can import tags from AWS, you must set up IAM roles:

1. Log in to the AWS console: https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/
2. Create a role with read access to EC2 tags.
   Specifically, the role must have an AWS Managed Policy with the required permissions (such as, AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess) attached. 
3. Add this role to your EC2 instance.
   For information about these steps, search for "To create an IAM role using the IAM console" and "Attaching an IAM Role to an Instance" in this page. 
4. Run the Machine Agent with Amazon Web Services enabled.

Configuration Options for Server Tagging

To edit these settings, log in to the Controller administration console using the root user password.

Configuration Options for Docker Tags

You can configure the Machine Agent to collect different types of tags. By default, all tags are collected. To turn off tag collection, set dockerTagsEnabled to "false".

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/DockerMonitoring/DockerMonitoringConfig.yml file.

2. Under the containerMonitoringConfig section, set dockerTagsEnabled: "false"

   # WARNING: Before making any changes to this file read the following section carefully
   # After editing the file, make sure the file follows the yml syntax. Common issues include
   # - Using tabs instead of spaces
   # - File encoding should be UTF-8
   #
   # The safest way to edit this file is to copy paste the examples provided and make the
   # necessary changes using a plain text editor instead of a WYSIWYG editor.
   
   
   # samplingInterval indicates how often to gather metric data. Units in milliseconds.
   samplingInterval: 30000
   
   containerMonitoringConfig:
       # containerProcessSelectorRegex defines regular expression to evaluate the processes in
       # each running container to be monitored by the machine agent. The regular expression is
       # compared against each process full command line within running
       # If the pattern matches, then the machine agent start monitoring it.
       containerProcessSelectorRegex: ".*[ ]-Dappdynamics.*"
       dockerTagsEnabled: "false" 

   CODE

Configuration Options for AWS Tags

To enable AWS tags collection:

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/ServerMonitoring.yml file.

2. For awsTagsConfig, set enabled: true


   //ServerMonitoring.yml
   # WARNING: Before making any changes to this file read the following section carefully
   # After editing the file, make sure the file follows the yml syntax. Common issues include
   # - Using tabs instead of spaces
   # - File encoding should be UTF-8
   #The safest way to edit this file is to copy paste the examples provided and make the
   # necessary changes using a plain text editor instead of a WYSIWYG editor.
   
   awsTagsConfig:
    	enabled: true
   	# If enabled it reports the AWS Tags to Controller
   	# update interval in milliseconds, minimum is 6 hours
   	samplingInterval: 21600000 
   

   CODE

Configuration Options for Microsoft Azure Tags

To enable collection of Microsoft Azure tags:

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/ServerMonitoring.yml file.

2. Under the azureTagsConfig: section, set enabled: "true".


   //ServerMonitoring.yml
   # WARNING: Before making any changes to this file read the following section carefully
   # After editing the file, make sure the file follows the yml syntax. Common issues include
   # - Using tabs instead of spaces
   # - File encoding should be UTF-8
   # The safest way to edit this file is to copy paste the examples provided and make the
   # necessary changes using a plain text editor instead of a WYSIWYG editor.
   
   azureTagsConfig:
   	 # If enabled it reports the Azure Tags to Controller
   	 enabled: true
   	 # update interval in milliseconds, minimum is 6 hours
   	 samplingInterval: 21600000 

   CODE

Configuration Options for Kubernetes and OpenShift Tags

To enable tag collection:

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/ServerMonitoring.yml file.

2. Under the k8sTagsConfig: section, set enabled: "true".


   //ServerMonitoring.yml
   # WARNING: Before making any changes to this file read the following section carefully
   # After editing the file, make sure the file follows the yml syntax. Common issues include
   # - Using tabs instead of spaces
   # - File encoding should be UTF-8
   # The safest way to edit this file is to copy paste the examples provided and make the
   # necessary changes using a plain text editor instead of a WYSIWYG editor. 
   
   k8sTagsConfig:
   	#If enabled it reports the Kubernetes Container tags to Controller
   	enabled: true

   CODE

3. (Optional) To get the Master and Worker tags, you must apply the following cluster role. Ensure to apply this cluster role before you run the Cluster Agent. This step is not applicable if you are using Cluster Agent 24.2.0 or later.

   apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
   kind: ClusterRole
   metadata:
     name: node-viewer
   rules:
   - apiGroups: [""]
     resources: ["nodes"]
     verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]

   YML

   For k8sNodeTagsConfig, set enabled: true


   //ServerMonitoring.yml
   # WARNING: Before making any changes to this file read the following section carefully
   # After editing the file, make sure the file follows the yml syntax. Common issues include
   # - Using tabs instead of spaces
   # - File encoding should be UTF-8
   # The safest way to edit this file is to copy paste the examples provided and make the
   # necessary changes using a plain text editor instead of a WYSIWYG editor.  
   
   k8sNodeTagsConfig:
   	 # enabled indicate whether the machine agent should report the k8s Cluster Nodes
   	 # If enabled it reports whether the Node is a 'Master' node or 'Worker' node
   	 enabled: true

   CODE

Configuration Options for ServiceNow CMDB Tags

By default, the Machine Agent does not collect the ServiceNow CMDB tags even when the tag collection is enabled at a global level. To enable the CMDB tags collection:

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/ServerMonitoring.yml file.

2. Under the serviceNowTagsConfig: section, set enabled: "true".

3. Specify the required OAuth token authentication details and the OAuth URL to query the ServiceNow cmdb_ci_server table.

//ServerMonitoring.yml
serviceNowTagsConfig:
    # the enabled flag, by default this is false, set to true to enable this tags extension
    enabled: false
    # update interval in milliseconds, minimum is 300,000 or 5 minutes, recommended(default) 1200000 or 20 minutes
    samplingInterval: 1200000
    oauthURL: "https://< site >/v1/auth/token"
    clientId: "your client id"
    clientSecret:
      encrypted: false
      value: "your client secret"
    clientScope: "the client scope"
    cmdburl: "https://< service now cmdb host >/now/table/cmdb_ci_server"
    # only override the hostname if the hostid does not match what is in the cmdb
    #hostname: "over ride host name"

Configuration Options for Smart Agent Tags

To enable reporting of all smart agent tags set in environmental variables:

1. Edit the <machine_agent_home>/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/ServerMonitoring.yml file.

2. Under the smartAgentTagsConfig: section, set enabled: "true".

//ServerMonitoring.yml 
smartAgentTagsConfig:
	# enabled indicate whether the machine agent should report the Smart agent tags
	# If enabled it reports all the smart agent variables set in environment variables (starting with APPDYNAMICS_ENTITY_TAG_ prefix)     
	enabled: true