An action is a predefined, reusable, automated response to an event. You can use actions to automate your runbooks.

A policy can trigger an action in response to any event. You configure which actions are triggered by which events when you configure policies. See Policies.

Types of Actions

You can create the following types of actions:

Notifications
Diagnostics
Remediation
Custom Actions
Cloud Auto-Scaling

Not all actions are applicable to all application environments or to all situations. Below are some general guidelines concerning different types of actions. For more details, see the pages on the specific actions before you assign an action to a policy.

The diagnostic thread dump actions can be performed only on nodes running a Java agent.
The diagnostic session actions can be triggered only by violations of business transaction performance health rules or slow or stalled transaction events, since these are the events that produce a view into transaction snapshots.
Remediation actions run a local script in a node and are available on nodes running on machines that have an installed machine agent. See Install the Standalone Machine Agent.
Custom Actions require a dedicated controller, deployed using either the on-premise or SaaS option. This feature is not supported for accounts on multi-tenant SaaS controllers.
Cloud Auto-Scaling actions require a previously created workflow. See Workflow Overview.

Actions Limits

The Controller limits the actions invoked based on the number of triggering events per event type. There is a maximum of ten events for any single event type that can trigger actions in a given minute. If the number of triggering events per type exceeds the limit, the actions that would have been triggered by the excess events are not started. You will not see a visual indication that these actions are not being started.

For example, your application can have up to ten Health Violation Started events triggering actions and up to ten Resource Pool Limit Reached events triggering actions within the same minute. But if you have eleven Health Violation Started events firing, the action that would be triggered by the eleventh event is not started.

To reduce unnecessary actions, there is a limit on the number of diagnostic and remediation actions that AppDynamics will invoke. The default limit is five actions per minute per machine for each type of action.

If, for example, a policy is configured on all the nodes where there are 100 nodes triggering actions, AppDynamics randomly selects five of the actions to execute.

To avoid exceeding the limits, design your policies so that they do not trigger an excessive number of actions for any particular event. You can generate fewer events by configuring the affected entities of your health rules at the tier level. See Entities Affected by a Health Rule.

Actions Requiring Approval

For actions that take thread dumps or run a local script, you can optionally require email approval to run the action whenever it is triggered. If you configure this option, human intervention is required before the "automated" action actually starts.

If you specify the approval required option when you configure the action, when the action is triggered an email containing a link is sent to the configured email address. The link presents a login screen (if the user is not already logged in to AppDynamics) and after the user logs in, a dialog requesting approval to take the thread dump or run the script. The user can click in this dialog to approve and start the action or cancel the action.

If you do not check the Require approval option before executing the Action check box, the action will start automatically with no human intervention.

Viewing and Creating Actions

To view and edit existing actions

1. Click Alert & Respond -> Actions in the left navigation pane.
The list of actions in the application appears.

To filter the types of actions displayed in the list, select the type at the top of the list. For example, to see only diagnostic and remediation actions, check Diagnostics and Remediation and clear the other check boxes.

2. To examine or modify an action, select the action in the list and double-click or click Edit.

3. To delete an action, select the action in the list and click Delete.

To create an action

1. Click Alert & Respond -> Actions in the left navigation pane.
2. Click the Create Action button.

3. Select the type of action that you want to create.
4. Click OK.

The instructions beyond this point vary depending on the type of action you are creating. See the topics for the action type you have selected.

Action Suppression

You can prevent policies from firing actions for a configurable time period. See Action Suppression.

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