Analytics Deployment Options

When planning your deployment, consider the following questions.

Are you implementing Application Analytics as a SaaS or an on-premises solution?

• For SaaS, the Events Service is provided as part of the SaaS service. AppDynamics stores the data and hosts the server components of the system for you. You install only the Analytics Agent components of the system. This is described in the section "Agent Side Components".
• For on-premises, you host the components yourself, storing all data on-premises. This means you need to install the Agent Side Components and the Controller and Events Service components described in Controller Deployment and Events Service Deployment. The on-premises deployment involves additional setup and administration, but it enables you to retain the analytics data within your own data center.  

For each monitored machine, what data are you capturing for analytics? Do you plan to use only Log Analytics or only Browser and Mobile Analytics? 

1. • For log data only:
     • Install either the Standalone Machine Agent or the Analytics Agent (standalone binary) on the machine. 
   • For both log data and transaction data:
     • Install either the Standalone Machine Agent or the Analytics Agent (standalone binary) on the machine. 
     • Enable the app agent Analytics Dynamic Service.
   • For transaction data only:
     • Download and install either the Standalone Machine Agent or the Analytics Agent (standalone binary) on each machine. You can also use a shared Analytics Agent instance. 
     • Enable the app agent Analytics Dynamic Service.
   • For Browser and Mobile Requests and Sessions data:
     • You do not need to install any agent-side Analytics components. The EUM processor passes data to Analytics automatically.

Will your Analytics Agent be installed on the same host as your application?

• If your Analytics Agent is on a host separate from the monitored application, see Remote Analytics Agent Sizing.

Analytics Agent-Side Components

For both SaaS and on-premises Application Analytics, you need to deploy (or enable) agent-side Analytics components in your application environment. These appear on the left side of the diagram.

Legend: Agent Components 

 AppDynamics App Agent: Application Analytics relies upon the same app server agents that AppDynamics APM uses. If you use AppDynamics APM, you likely already have these deployed to your monitored applications.

 Analytics Agent: The Analytics Agent collects data from one or more app server agents and sends it to the Events Service. It also reads and transmits log data from log files from the local machine. The Analytics Agent is available as a standalone binary or as part of the Standalone Machine Agent download:

• • As part of the Standalone Machine Agent download, the Analytics Agent runs as an extension (also called a monitor)
  • A standalone binary distribution of the Analytics Agent is available for Windows environments or other environments that do not have the Standalone Machine Agent installed. 

 Analytics Dynamic Service: The Analytics Dynamic Service extends your app server agent functionality to collect and forward data to the Analytics Agent. It is built into the Java and .NET  Agents, but is not enabled by default. No additional download is needed.

Connection Ports

For SaaS-based installations, the connection between the Analytics Agent and the Events Service in the cloud takes place over ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS).

For on-premises installations, the port on which the Events Service receives data from the Agent is configured during installation.

Browser and Mobile Analytics

To see Analytics data from Browser and Mobile Real User Monitoring, you need to enable those components and enable Analytics. For information on using the on-premises EUM server, see EUM Server Deployment.

Deploying Analytics Agents to Multiple Nodes 

A real world scenario is unlikely to consist of a single monitored node, as shown in the diagram above. It usually consists of many applications deployed over many hosts. 

While the APM app server agents continue to send data to the Controller in the normal way, the Analytics Dynamic Service sends its data to the Analytics Agent.  This agent runs in a separate JVM process in the local environment or network, either as part of the Standalone Machine Agent or on its own. 

There must be at least one Analytics Agent in the monitored environment, although multiple app server agents collecting only transaction data can share a single Analytics Agent, as shown in the figure. However, each machine where you want to gather log data must have its own Analytics Agent instance. 

In this example, AppServerHost1-3 are collecting only transaction data, so only app server agents are required.  Each one connects to the Analytics Agent on AppServerHost4, where log information is also being collected. The Analytics Agents could also reside on the same machines as each app server agents. On AppServerHost5, only log data is being collected, so an Analytics Agent is also necessary there.  

Server Side Components for On-Premise

To set up AppDynamics Analytics on-premise, you also need to install the server parts of the system, the AppDynamics Controller and the Events Service.  

The following figure depicts the basic components of an On-premises deployment:

Legend: Server Components 

 AppDynamics Controller: The heart of an AppDynamics deployment, the Controller processes and presents the information gathered by the agents. 

 Events Service: The unstructured document store, it gathers and stores data from the Analytics Agents and, if you have End User Monitoring, from the EUM Server. It allows the Controller UI to run queries on that data.  

 If you are using SaaS EUM, you must use the SaaS Events Service.  If you are using the on-prem EUM Server, you must use an on-premises instance of the Events Service.