This page describes how to install and administer the Python Agent, the runtime agent used to monitor Python with AppDynamics Application Monitoring.
Python Agent Architecture
The Python Agent discovers, and maps and tracks metrics for business transactions, app services, and backends in your web application by injecting instrumentation into the Python application at runtime. The agent operates from inside the WSGI server that contains the instrumented application.
The agent proxy is a Java process that handles the communication between the Python Agent and Controller. The proxy reports performance metrics to the Controller, where the data is stored, analyzed, and presented.
As shown in the following figure, the proxy can serve multiple Python Agents simultaneously.
In pure Python environments, the proxy is automatically started when you start the Python Agent. In other types of environments, you need to start the proxy manually.
However the proxy is started, the commands that start the agent check whether the proxy is running before attempting to start it.
Install the Agent Overview
If you have never installed the agent, the best way to start is with the Getting Started Wizard in the Controller. This installer configures your agents with the values that you supply in the wizard.
If you downloaded the agent from PyPI, use the instructions in Install the Python Agent to instrument your application manually. In this case, see Python Agent Settings for a complete list of all the Python Agent settings that you can use to instrument the agent.
Getting Started with the Download Wizard
The Getting Started Wizard walks you through configuration steps and helps you download the agent. To access the wizard, from the home page of the Controller, click Getting Started and then Python.
The wizard provides for a minimally configured agent, with settings for the Controller connection, the business application name, and tier name. For advanced scenarios, see Install the Python Agent.