AppDynamics Application Performance Management Platform Notes

The following notes describe updates to the common components of the AppDynamics Application Performance Management (APM) Platform, including changes to the cross-product elements of the Controller UI.

If an artifact has been updated, the version number of the updated artifact and its availability date are listed below. The version number corresponds to that shown on the download portal (http://download.appdynamics.com).

The most recent releases appear at the top of the page.

4.5.17 Updates

January 28, 2020

Enhancements

Alert and Respond APIs

AppDynamics introduces REST APIs to perform CRUD operations on the health rules, policies and health rule schedules. You can use these APIs to create and maintain 'Alert & Respond' configurations at scale. For more information, see:

• Health Rule API
• Schedule API
• Policy API

Health Rule Evaluation Time

The maximum value for the health rule evaluation time frame is reset to 120 minutes. You can define an evaluation time frame between 1 minute to 120 minutes using the values in the Use data from last drop-down. For more information, see Health Rule Evaluation Time Frame.

4.5.16 Updates 

November 14, 2019

Enhancements

• The flow map icon () now displays next to an application in the Waterfall View snapshot. 
• The Waterfall View snapshot supports only the display of downstream applications (now shown with the flow map icon). 
• The Cross-BT Hovercard now shows calls from upstream business transactions.
• The AppDynamics Controller has certified support for SSO integration with the following SAML 2.0 identify providers (IDPs):
  • Okta
  • OneLogin
  • Ping Identity
  • Azure Active Directory

  • IBM Cloud Identity

• Health Rule Schedules

The AppDynamics health rule schedule screens have been revamped considerably to make defining and executing health rule schedules easier. You can now create a custom schedule without using a CRON expression and define a time zone specific to your application, independent of the controller time zone. This eliminates the need to adjust the time zone manually in the schedule, if your application is in a separate time zone than that of the controller. You can continue to use the health rule schedules created in the previous versions using CRON expressions. For more information, see Health Rule Schedules.

•  Dash Studio

  • Dash Studio is now available for all customers including on-premise. However, for on-premise customers it is not enabled by default and must be enabled by setting the controller administrative flag feature.dashboards.beta.enabled to true.

  • Time comparison capability is now available for Dash Studio Time Series widgets (SaaS Only).

Deprecation Notices

• As of 4.5.16, support for AMF configuration for endpoints in the Enterprise Console has been removed and is no longer required. 

4.5.15 Updates 

November 1, 2019

Enhancements 

• Metric Retention

In AppDynamics SaaS version 4.5.15, retention of one-minute granularity of metrics data in the Controller is increased from one day to eight days. Throughout the AppDynamics SaaS version 4.5.15 interface, you can see the increase in metrics data granularity in time-series charts and grid-type windows or widgets. For example, you can see the increase in metrics granularity retention in the Metrics Browser, Custom Dashboards, Database Monitoring, Server Monitoring, Network Visibility Monitoring, End User Monitoring, and Mobile Monitoring pages. As part of this metrics data retention change for SaaS version 4.5.15, metrics data are rolled up to a lower granularity in the user interface automatically when large time ranges are selected. You can select shorter time ranges to view more granular metrics. The number of data points for any given period that is displayed in AppDynamics charts and grids depends on the browser and monitor resolution. 

• Alert and Respond

AppDynamics now allows you to access anomaly events using predefined template variables in both HTTP request templates and email action templates. For more information, see Predefined Templating Variables.

• Dash Studio

AppDynamics is introducing the Beta version of Dash Studio, a next generation dashboards experience designed to make building dashboards faster and easier. Dash Studio is available in the Dash Studio (Preview Release) tab under Dashboards & Reports, while your previous dashboards are still available unmodified, under the Dashboards tab. As we are seeking user feedback while Dash Studio is in Beta, we encourage you to provide us with feedback through the AppDynamics Community and via the Feedback button available within Dash Studio. Refinements and new capabilities will be added to Dash Studio Preview Release periodically over the coming months.

Dash Studio introduces the following:

• • Visual Dashboard Editor
  • Responsive and Fixed Aspect Ratio Layouts
  • Redesigned Data Panel
  • Dash Studio Widgets (Time Series, Metric Number, Label)
  • Dashboard Variables

• Deprecation Notices

Starting in version 4.5.15, AppDynamics controllers will no longer support Swagger.

Known Issues

• Customers who have upgraded to this controller release may find that SAML no longer works for authentication to the iOS and Android mobile apps. Upgrading them to their newest versions via the iOS App Store and Android Play Store will fix this issue.

4.5.14 Updates 

September 17, 2019

Enhancements

• Cross-BT Correlation

When a business transaction (BT), that represents the endpoint of a service, calls another BT that represents the endpoint of another service, that is a "cross-BT" call. This is typical of One-App-Per-Service architectures, where multiple applications each correspond to different services and BTs represent service endpoints.

Cross-BT Correlation is a new AppDynamics feature that enables you to inspect cross-BT calls, using the Cross-BT Hovercard in the Application flow map.

The hovercard provides performance data for cross-BT calls, including those that fail to reach their intended targets. This enables you to perform service monitoring, problem isolation, and root cause analysis (RCA) for applications in One-App-Per-Service architectures.

• Two new configuration options have been added to make the Reports Service more secure when communicating with the controller. To reduce Report Service port exposure, you can exclude the use of either the http or https port. You can also limit the report server listener to the localhost, to be completely secure.

4.5.13 Updates

August 26, 2019

Enhancements

• You can now see Application context in the audit report for all the entities, enabling a better understanding of application information at the top level.
  • Modifications to Business Transaction config are audited in the context of an Application
  • Modifications to Alerts/Health Rules are also audited with Application Name to facilitate a consistent end-user experience
• Application Analytics
  Analytics now has a home page. See 4.5.x Application Analytics Notes for more information. 

• Alert and Respond
  AppDynamics now allows you to define 'Persistence Thresholds' for health rule conditions. This reduces alert noise and ensures that false alerts are minimized. You can define the 'number of times metric performance data should exceed the defined threshold' to constitute a violation and subsequently trigger an alert. This way, any temporary threshold violation is ignored. For more information, see Persistence Thresholds.

• Transaction Snapshots

  From Transaction Snapshots > Overview > Summary, you can no longer view the number of request segments by clicking More Details. Instead, view the number of request segments from the Segment List tab.

Resolved Issues

Known Issues

• If you are having issues with Amazon CloudWatch Integration, see Troubleshoot AWS Integration Issues.

4.5.12 Updates

July 31, 2019

Enhancements

• (SaaS Controllers with Blitz enabled) The Tiers & Nodes dashboard by default only shows the tiers and nodes that receiving performance data for the selected timeframe. You can use a filter to view tiers and nodes receiving performance data, not receiving performance data, or all tiers and nodes.
• Whenever a user is deleted from the user list, any custom dashboard that the user has created becomes non-functional with no permissions and is unable to execute properly. This impacts all associated dashboard-based reports and shares. You can solve this problem using the Recover function.
  

Boolean Expression to Evaluate Health Rule Conditions

You can now define a boolean expression using AND and OR operators to evaluate complex health rule conditions for entities in your application. The health rule is considered to violate if the boolean expression evaluates to 'true'. The advantages of using a boolean expression are:

• reduces the need to create multiple health rules to monitor various performance metrics. It allows you to evaluate complex criteria for multiple conditions in one go
• well-calibrated boolean expression ensures reduced false alerts
• easy to create and maintain health rules with complex evaluation criteria using simple condition names. Conditions are named as A, B, C and so on

• allows the use of AND and OR operators to define a highly complex expression comprising a maximum of 8 conditions

 For more information, see Health Rule Conditions and Configure Health Rule Conditions.

Support Notice

The API to enable and disable the Scopes Configuration Model is disabled for Controller versions 4.5.12 and later. AppDynamics ended support for the Scopes Configuration Model API in Controller version 4.5.11 as part of the Flex2HTML effort.

Resolved Issues

4.5.11 Updates

July 8, 2019

Enhancements 

• Application name is added to the entities that are defined in the Controller Audit for OBJECT_CREATED and OBJECT_UPDATED. See Controller Audit Log for more details.
• Flash is disabled by default for the entire Controller UI.
• The Metric Browser also only shows by default the nodes for business applications that are receiving performance data for the selected timeframe. You can also use a filter to view nodes receiving performance data, nodes not receiving performance data, or all nodes.
• AppDynamics enables the monitoring of all containers on the host machine through the sim.docker.monitorAPMContainersOnly property.  By default, only containers with APM agents running inside are monitored but this behavior can be changed by setting this property to false. 
• You can now set permissions for the Analytics API Key on Connected Devices. 

End of Life Notice

As part of the Flex2HTML effort, we are deprecating the legacy transaction configuration model and UI in the 4.5.11 Controller release. In its place, we will be rolling all users to our existing Scopes-based transaction configuration model, which has been GA since 4.3 and is the default configuration model for all applications created in 4.3+. 

The API to disable the Scopes-based transaction configuration model will not be supported in 4.5.11 and later Controller versions. The 4.5.11 documentation will no longer contain any references to the legacy transaction configuration model. 

See our community post for more information.

Resolved Issues

Known Issues

There can be a short delay before non-APM containers are monitored when upgrading to the 4.5.10 Machine Agent. This happens where the user sets the sim.docker.monitorAPMContainersOnly property to enable monitoring of non-APM containers but also has sim.docker.infraMode.enabled set to true.  In this case, non-APM containers won't be monitored until on-line schema migration happens. This takes approximately 4.5 hours after the Controller starts up.

4.5.9 Updates

April 22, 2019

Resolved Issues

Deprecation Notices

• In the Scopes configuration screen of the Controller UI, the columns "Created by" and "Last modified by" have been removed. 
• Once the Controller is upgraded to version 4.5.9, the Compare Releases functionality/feature will no longer be available in the Controller UI.
• Once the Controller is upgraded to version 4.5.9, the Flex screens functionality/feature will no longer be available in the Controller UI.

4.5.8 Updates

March 25, 2019

Enhancements

• The medium-sized Controller has been certified to run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with Aurora database support. See Controller System Requirements
• Anomaly detection and root cause analysis, powered by the Cognition Engine, is now generally available for all SaaS customers.
• The pipe '|' or colon ':' can now be used interchangeably for the metric selection to work. See Using Wildcards in Metric Definitions

Resolved Issues

Deprecation and End of Life (EOL) Notices

• As part of the Flex2HTML effort, we are deprecating On-Demand Reports. You can create reports similar to On-Demand in a few ways:

  • Create a custom dashboard that displays the data you would normally receive from On-Demand reports. Next, set the report delivery, either one-time or at regular intervals, in Scheduled Reports. 
  • If your deployment is on-premises, you can defer the controller update to continue using On-Demand reports. 

4.5.7 Updates

February 25, 2019

Resolved Issues

4.5.6 Updates

February 2019

Resolved Issues

4.5.5 Updates

December 21, 2018

Resolved Issues

4.5.4 Updates

November 19, 2018

Resolved Issues

4.5.2 Updates

October 15, 2018

Resolved Issues

Known Issues

LDAP users are not displayed when paging is disabled and the number of users exceeds 1000.

Workaround:

• Enable paging with LDAP and set the number of records returned from LDAP query to less than 1000. 
• Manage LDAP user permissions through groups. 

Deprecation and End of Life (EOL) Notices

• The Cloud Auto-Scaling functionality has been removed. Once a Controller is upgraded to 4.5.2, Cloud Auto-Scaling will no longer be available in the UI and the functionality will no longer work.

4.5.1 Updates

September 5, 2018

Resolved Issues

Known Issues

• Flash issues have become more prevalent in 4.5.1 and onwards. All customers that use the latest version of Chrome are affected, regardless of the Controller version. See How do I install Flash in Chrome? for more information on how to enable Flash-based features.
  As a best practice, AdBlock should be disabled when using the Controller UI. See How do I disable AdBlock in Chrome? for more information on how to do so.

4.5.0 Updates

July 11, 2018

Enhancements

Application Performance Management

.NET Core for Linux SDK

The .NET Core for Linux SDK lets you monitor the performance of .NET Core applications running on Linux.

The SDK supports the following:

• • Business Transaction registration and error reporting
  • Exit call with correlation and error reporting
  • Metrics
  • Snapshots with user properties but without callgraphs

Audit Logging

• Audit logging coverage has been made more comprehensive. It now includes the following:
  • Failed logins
  • Changes to configuration settings, for example, health rules, policies, actions, and so on.
  • Application deletion
• Audit log, report, and API details have been enhanced to include more information about what was updated.
• Audit Reports:
  • You can use include/exclude filters in scheduled audit reports and rest API.
  • There is also support for JSON and CSV formats for audit reports.
• You can enable or disable persistence of audit log state-change data using audit.log.changes.persisted flag in the admin.jsp file.

Data Collection Dashboard

• You can view the current state of all configuration parameters that may affect your security and privacy from a single dashboard view. These settings include retention settings, custom data collectors, IP-address retention in EUM, and so on. See Data Collection Dashboard for more information.

Custom Dashboard Viewer permissions

• A custom dashboard viewer can view all data that the dashboard owner is permitted to view on the controller-level custom dashboards, regardless of application-level or other restrictions applied on the dashboard data.

Data Privacy Policy Dialog

• AppDynamics provides a data privacy policy reminder, in the form of a UI dialog, when you or your users configure parts of the AppDynamics products that could be used to collect regulated or other protected information.
  This customizable statement is present in all areas of the AppDynamics UI where data collection can be configured.

User Management

• Authentication and authorization security enhancements have been made to the AppDynamics APM Platform in the form of scalable, securable, and admin configurable support:
  • You can create and use API Clients to provide secure access to the Controller through REST API calls. These calls now use OAuth token-based authentication over basic authentication. See API Clients for more information.
  • The SAML authentication can handle encrypted SAML responses from identity providers. You can enable SAML Encryption on the Authentication Provider of Administration on your Controller. 
  • When creating usernames in SAML in Azure environments, the UserName attribute is used if it is passed along. The NameID attribute is not handled if it is passed back in Azure. If you relied on the legacy behavior of concatenating the first name and surname, then you can work around this enhancement by changing your Azure provider to return the concatenated names in the UserName attribute.

UI

• The UI for configuring health rules and policies has been redesigned to create a cleaner look and make it more intuitive. For more information, see, Configure Policies, Configure Health Rules, Health Rules, and Mobile Health Rules.

License Management

• License rules are now supported for Service Availability Monitoring (SAM). You can view the SAM license graph on the Rules tab under License.
• You can create license rules using the REST API.

Resolved Issues

Known Issues

• 4.5 SAML login requests fail post upgrade due to ADFS IdP. See Support Advisory: 4.5 SAML login requests fail post upgrade.

IBM WebSphere

• For JMX functionality to work, set a Currently monitored statistic set to an option other than None in IBM WebSphere.