This page provides operational and setup guidelines for running the Controller on Windows. 

User Account Requirements

The user account you use to install the Controller must have administrative privileges on the host Windows machine. 

If the host Windows machine is the Enterprise Console host, the Windows user account is configured to run with administrative privileges by default.

Virus Scanners  

Configure virus scanners on the target machine to ignore the AppDynamics Enterprise Console directory and database directory (or simply the entire Controller directory). Code is never executed from the data directory, so it is generally safe to exclude this directory from virus scanning. The default location of the data directory is <controller_home>\db\data. 

Also configure virus scanners to trust the Controller launcher, database executable, reporting service launcher, and events service (analytics processor) launchers. The launcher names are: 

  • Controller launcher: AppDynamicsDomain1Service.exe
  • MySQL executable: mysqld.exe
  • Events service launcher: analytics-processor.exe
  • Reporting service launcher: appdynamicsreportingservice.exe

Windows Defender Scanning

Exclude the Controller data directory (<controller_home>\db\data), or simply the entire Controller directory, from scanning by Windows Defender. If you are not sure whether Windows Defender is running on the system, check for it in your local Services list. You can either configure the Controller data directory to be excluded in the Windows Defender Control Panel, or disable the service altogether if it is not needed. For details on how to view services and exclude directories in Windows Defender, refer to the documentation for your version of Windows.

Windows Indexing Service

Ensure that the Windows indexing service is configured to ignore the Controller data directory (<controller_home>\db\data), or simply the entire Controller directory: 

The data directory does not contain any files that are meaningful to the indexer, so it can be excluded from indexing. To exclude the directory from indexing, you can add the directory to the excluded directories list in the Indexer Control Panel, disable indexing in directory preferences, or stop the indexing service entirely. 

To add the directory to the excluded directory list, follow these steps: 

  1. From the Control Panel Indexing Options dialog, click the Modify button.  
  2. In the Indexed Locations dialog, navigate to and select the Controller data directory. 
  3. Clear the checkbox for the data directory and click OK.

Windows Update

Configure the Windows Update preferences so that the server is not automatically restarted after an update. To configure the restart policy: 

  1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor window (search for and run the "gpedit" executable).
  2. Navigate to the Windows Update component. In the tree, you can find it under Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components. 
  3. Double-click on the "No auto-restart..." setting.

  4. Select the Enabled option and click Apply.

.NET Framework

Components of the .NET Framework 3.5 are required to allow the Controller to be installed as a Windows service on the target machine. The installer checks your system and indicates if .NET 3.5 is not found. Follow the instructions on the Enterprise Console to get the required components.

Even if you have the latest version of .NET installed, you still have to install .NET 3.5. This is due to a Glassfish requirement where the Glassfish launcher explicitly requires .NET 3.5.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

The Controller is automatically installed as a Windows service. Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 operating systems must have the hotfix described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2549760. This hotfix ensures that the Windows registry modifications made by the installer to extend the default service timeouts work as expected. The installer checks for the presence of the hotfix and warns you if it is not found.