Related pages:

This page provides an overview of the options for creating an account and how to get started using your AppDynamics online Account Management Portal and Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Platform.

As part of your deployment, the AppDynamics APM provides:

  • A Controller for data collection.
  • A Controller UI for data analysis.
  • An online Account Management Portal to manage your account, users, subscriptions, license usage, and role functionality. 

As a best practice, we recommend that you follow the Deployment Planning Guide and create a deployment plan for your environment and needs.

Create an Account

Your first step to working with AppDynamics is to create an account. AppDynamics provides both SaaS and on-premises deployment options to fit your data security needs, application workflow, and business environment. Reviewing the Deployment Planning Guide will help you determine if the type of data you will be monitoring requires a SaaS, on-premises, or hybrid solution. 

Choose an account type and deployment option.

The default trial configuration is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment hosted by AppDynamics. 

  1. Follow this Start Free Trial link.
  2. Enter your information and create a secure password.

    1. The email and password you enter will be your login throughout your AppDynamics trial experience. Therefore, it is essential that you use a valid email address.

      You can skip the form and chat with a live expert by using the online chat feature.

  3. Agree to the terms and click Get Started.
  4. Click Launch AppDynamics.

The Deployment Planning Guide will help you determine which type of enterprise account best suits your business. An AppDynamics customer account manager will work with your organization to determine the proper deployment and configuration. The deployment model governs your next course of action.

Every user account must be created with a valid email. The email entered at account creation will be the user's login ID throughout their AppDynamics experience.

AppDynamics will provide you with a hosted Controller. You will receive an email with URL information and login instructions.

AppDynamics does not support user or agent requests that originate from any URL other than the Controller URL provided at registration or otherwise edited by AppDynamics. Due to system security improvements, requests from custom URLs will be rejected and may cause a service disruption.

If a custom URL is required, we recommend that you create a forward proxy in your environment.


Once AppDynamics provides a hosted Controller, you will:

  1. Choose and install AppDynamics agents.
  2. Add users to the Controller UI. 
  3. Configure Email/SMS settings to enable notifications on a preconfigured SMTP server.
You will need to contact AppDynamics for on-premises enterprise deployments.

Gain System Access

After you complete registration and create an account, you will have access to your Account Management Portal for online account administration and, if you opted for a SaaS deployment, access to your hosted Controller platform.

Online Account Administration

The Account Management Portal provides a secure online area where administrators can:

  • Manage the company account and personal profile separately.
  • See a company overview of account details, subscription information, open support tickets, and active resource projects. 
  • Launch available AppDynamics Controllers.
  • Add, edit, and delete users, as well as administer user groups, subscriptions, and roles.
  • Download agents, platforms, and product updates. 

Your account type will determine the services available in the Account Management Portal.

  1. Access the Welcome email sent to the address you used to create your account.
  2. Click Get Started. 
  3. Follow the instructions.

Controller UI

An AppDynamics Controller is fundamental to every deployment. Integrated agents collect data from a monitored environment and send it to the Controller. The Controller UI is where you can view, understand, and analyze that data.

How you access your controller depends on your deployment. Your account will include a subscription license for each product you purchased during registration. A subscription can have one or more modules and you can have multiple subscriptions, each one having a distinct lifecycle.

Choose your deployment configuration.

When you complete registration with your valid email, the AppDynamics Operations team will use that address to send your SaaS URL and access details.

  1. Click the SaaS URL provided in the email.
  2. Enter the Account Name given in the email.
  3. Click Login to access your new web-based Controller UI.
  4. Navigate to Getting Started > Getting Started Wizard.
  5. Select an agent from the Application list.
  6. Follow the steps to install an agent. See Install Agents.

When you complete registration with your valid email, the AppDynamics Operations team will use that address to send information about the components you need to start instrumenting your application and access your AppDynamics SaaS account.

The first person to access the Controller UI must be the same person that initially registered with AppDynamics. This user can access the system and create a system administrator to delegate managerial capabilities if needed.

  1. Follow the URL provided to log in to your web-based Controller UI.
  2. Enter the Account Name and User Name given in the email.
  3. Create a secure password by clicking Forgot Password to have a password reset link sent to the registered email.
  4. Click Login.
  5. Navigate to Getting Started > Getting Started Wizard.
  6. Select an agent from the Application list.
  7. Follow the steps to install an agent. See Install Agents.

AppDynamics does not support user or agent requests that originate from any URL other than the Controller URL provided at registration or otherwise edited by AppDynamics. Due to system security improvements, requests from custom URLs will be rejected and may cause a service disruption.

If a custom URL is required, we recommend that you create a forward proxy in your environment.

Log in to your local instance using the administrator credentials you created during the installation.   

The first step in using the AppDynamics APM Platform is to download the Enterprise Console. The Enterprise Console is the installer for the Controller and Events Service. You can use it to install and manage the entire lifecycle of new or existing on-premises AppDynamics Platforms and components.

To get the Enterprise Console:

  1. Download the Enterprise Console from AppDynamics Downloads.
  2. Follow the instructions on the page to install the Controller.  
  3. Once you have installed the Controller, you can log in using the administrator credentials you created during the installation.
  4. Navigate to Getting Started > Getting Started Wizard.
  5. Select an agent from the Application list.
  6. Follow the steps in the wizard to install an agent. See Install Agents

Install Application Agents

An AppDynamics deployment consists of multiple application agents to monitor different components in your environment. For installing most types of agents, you can use the Getting Started Wizard in the Controller UI.

Log in to the Controller UI and navigate to Applications > Create an Application > Create an Application using the Getting Started Wizard. Follow the instructions in the Wizard to install agents in your application environment.

Review the Install App Server Agents documentation for instructions and guidance. AppDynamics provides an Agent Installer that simplifies the agent installation process and streamlines the deployment of the Java and Machine Agents.

Connect Agents to the Controller

The Getting Started Wizard automatically configures settings for connecting agents to the Controller. If you manually download agents, you must configure the Controller connections. You may need to adjust the configuration of network components, such as firewalls or proxies, to permit traffic from the agent to the Controller. The connection is unidirectional, meaning that agents always initiate the connections to the Controller.

The following graphic shows the connections agents use to reach the platform. The actual connections vary between on-premises and SaaS platforms.

Agents to Platform Connections Diagram

Continue with Your AppDynamics Deployment

Best Practice

We recommend that you follow the Deployment Planning Guide and create a deployment plan for your environment and needs.

You can start using AppDynamics immediately without instrumentation and configuration. Then, at a later date, you can optimize the configuration to make the best use of AppDynamics for your environment and requirements. After you install agents and restart your applications, AppDynamics automatically builds an environment of your application. You can see the model in the dashboards and flow maps view of the Controller UI. The Controller monitors your application workload, uses machine learning to determine what is normal for your environment, and applies sensible defaults for detecting abnormal activity and application errors.

The timeline in the Deployment Planning Guide outlines a typical start to your AppDynamics journey.   

Tutorials

Learn more about specific areas of the AppDynamics APM Platform by following one of these tutorials: