SE Lab for AppDynamics - Server Visibility

1. General Information

This Lab will cover:

• Docker Visibility
• Server Tagging
• Tier Metric Correlator

2. Lab Setup

2.1. Create your environment

• Log into Ravello
• Create an App from the Blueprint ServerVisibility-Lab-bp
• SSH Credentials
  • User: ravello
  • Password: Appdynamics123
• Controller/Platform Credentials
  • User: admin
  • Password: appdynamics

2.2. Accessing the Lab

• SSH into your environment
  • ssh ravello@<YOUR RAVELLO IP>
• Accessing the UIs
  • Platform Admin - http://<YOUR RAVELLO IP>:9191
  • Controller - http://<YOUR RAVELLO IP>:8090
  • OpenShift - https://<YOUR RAVELLO IP>:8443

2.3. Setup Steps

• Start OpenShift
  • oc cluster up --public-hostname=<YOUR RAVELLO IP>
• Login
  • oc login -u system:admin
• Create Service Account (This is needed to do some privileged stuff in OpenShift)
  • oc create serviceaccount appd
  • oc policy add-role-to-user view -z appd
  • oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z appd

3. Docker Visibility

3.1. Setup the Agent

• Check the AppDynamics Agent config file
• Properties required to activate Docker Visibility

- name: APPDYNAMICS_SIM_ENABLED
  value: "true"
- name: APPDYNAMICS_DOCKER_ENABLED
  value: "true"

• Mount the Host Volumes and Docker Socket into the Agent containers

volumeMounts:
  - mountPath: /app-agent
    name: app-agent
  - mountPath: /var/run/docker.sock
    name: docker-sock
  - mountPath: /hostroot
    name: host-root
volumes:
- hostPath:
  path: /
name: host-root
- hostPath:
  path: /opt/app-agent
name: app-agent
- hostPath:
  path: /var/run/docker.sock
name: docker-sock

• Deploy the Agent
  • cd /home/ravello/openshift
  • oc create -f appd-agents.yml
• Check that the Agent shows up in your Controller UI Server tab
  • 

3.2. Deploy the Application

• Deploy the base Application
  • oc new-app codecentric/springboot-maven3-centos~https://github.com/michaelenglert/springscale
• Patch the deployment so we can mount our host volume in
  • oc patch dc springscale -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"serviceAccountName":"appd"}}}}'
• Add the Host Volume
  • oc volume dc/springscale --add -t hostPath -m /app-agent --path /opt/app-agent/
• Set some environment variables
  • ROUTER_TCP_BALANCE_SCHEME - OpenShift Load Balancing setting to not use sticky session
  • APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_APPLICATION_NAME - Set AppDynamics App Name
  • APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_TIER_NAME - Set AppDynamics Tier Name
  • JAVA_OPTS - Actually adding the Agent and use Node Reuse
  • oc env dc/springscale ROUTER_TCP_BALANCE_SCHEME=roundrobin APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_APPLICATION_NAME=app APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_TIER_NAME=springscale JAVA_OPTS="-Dappdynamics.agent.reuse.nodeName.prefix=springscale -Dappdynamics.agent.reuse.nodeName=true -javaagent:/app-agent/javaagent.jar"
• Check the Controller that our new App shows up
  • 
• Check that the Container is available as well
  • 

Congratulations you successfully deployed Docker Visibility within OpenShift

4. Tier Metric Correlator (Heatmaps)

4.1. Prepare the Application and Load

• Scale your Application
  • oc scale dc springscale --replicas=5
• Get your service IP
  • oc status
  • Look for svc/springscale - <Service IP>:8080
• Put load on the system
  • /home/ravello/load.sh <Service IP>
• Grab a coffee (10 minutes)

4.2. Enable Heatmaps

• Goto the admin.jsp of your Controller
• Login with Password appdynamics
• Goto Account Settings
• Edit Account customer1
• Add additional property
  • ENABLE_SIM_HEATMAPS=true
• Save

4.2. Use Heatmaps

• Login to the Controller
• Navigate to your Application --> Tiers & Nodes
• Right Click the springscale Tier
• Click Correlate Metrics
• Click on 1 of the outliers
• You will see the biggest outliers related to 1 specific Node

5. Server Tagging

• Get the POD list and note the exact name of the POD starting with appd-agents-
  • oc get pods
• Login to the POD
  • oc exec -ti <POD Name> /bin/bash
• Navigate to the Server Monitoring config
  • cd /machine-agent/extensions/ServerMonitoring/conf/
• Look at the file
  • more ServerMonitoring.yml
• Add the dummy tag by uncommenting the lines
  • sed -i -e 's/^#tags/tags/g' ServerMonitoring.yml
  • sed -i -e 's/^# en/ en/g' ServerMonitoring.yml
• Check the tag in the Controller UI

6. Troubleshooting

• Controller is not working
  • Restart the docker container docker restart appd-platform
  • Start the services /home/ravello/startup.sh
• Controller license expired
  • Get a license.lic file
  • Copy it to the ravello instance
    • scp /my/local/folder/license.lic ravello@<YOUR RAVELLO IP>/home/ravello/
  • Copy it to the Controller
    • docker cp /home/ravello/license.lic appd-platform:/opt/appdynamics/platform/controller/

7. Provide Feedback for the Lab

• Do a pull request
• Ping on slack