The AppDynamics Server Visibility module uses the Machine Agent to provide extended hardware metrics. Server Visibility includes additional windows in the Controller UI that enable you to quickly see underlying infrastructure issues impacting your application performance. This means you can rapidly troubleshoot hardware performance problems that are impacting your applications.
Before you Start
Server Visibility requires the following:
To view basic hardware metrics without Server Visibility, see Viewing Hardware Metrics.
Server Visibility is currently available for Linux, Windows, Solaris, and AIX. You must do the following before you enable Server Visibility:
- Review the Server Visibility Requirements and Supported Environments.
- Install and configure the Machine Agent on a machine with a supported OS as described in Install the Machine Agent.
Feature Comparison
Feature
| Server Visibility | Machine Agent |
|---|
| Supported Platforms | Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX | Linux and Unix-like systems,
MacOS, Windows, and AIX |
| Extensions and Custom Metrics | Yes | Yes |
| Monitor Docker container metrics from the Docker host | Yes | No |
| Tier Metric Correlator | Yes | No |
| Dynamic Monitoring Mode | Yes | No |
| JVM Crash Guard | Yes | Yes |
| Remediation Scripts | Yes | Yes |
| Licensing | Server Visibility
| Machine Agent |
| Graphical User Interface | Yes | Functionality is limited to viewing Machine Agent metrics in the Servers List |
Extended Hardware Metrics | Yes | No |
| Service Availability Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Server metrics in transaction snapshots | Yes | No |
| Server KPIs in application flow map | Yes | No |
| Health rules for extended hardware metrics | Yes | No |
Permissions
Server Visibility provides two predefined roles and two related permissions:
Server Visibility Administrator
Server Visibility User
View Server Visibility permission
Configure Server Visibility permission - enables configuring Service Availability
For more details, see Server Visibility Permissions.
Server Visibility User Interface
The Servers list provides key performance metrics for all your servers on a single window.
The Servers > Dashboard shows key performance metrics for the selected machine, including the top 10 consumers of CPU and memory.
The Servers > Volumes window displays performance metrics for disks, partitions, and volumes for the selected machine.
The Servers > Network window shows network performance metrics for network interfaces on the selected machine.
The Servers > Processes window shows a configurable set of performance metrics for processes.
The Servers > Containers window lists the monitored containers used by an application.
Using the Server Visibility UI
The Server Visibility user interface uses many of the same mechanisms that are common to the various windows of the Controller UI. The image below illustrates and briefly describes these mechanisms.
Search Results and Sorting
From Controller 4.5.13 onwards, pagination is the default behavior on the servers and containers list pages. The information is fetched on demand and additional records will be retrieved and displayed as a user scrolls. Search is only available for the name and host id columns. Sorting is only available on the hostname, container, metric % and health fields.