URL Monitor for AppDynamics

This extension works only with the standalone machine agent. It has been tested against various URLs with different authentication mechanisms.

Use Case

The URL monitoring extension gathers metrics and sends them to the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Pre-requisites

1. Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
2. Download and install Apache Maven which is configured with Java 8 to build the extension artifact from source. You can check the java version used in maven using command mvn -v or mvn --version. If your maven is using some other java version then please download java 8 for your platform and set JAVA_HOME parameter before starting maven.

Installation

1. Clone the "url-monitoring-extension" repo using git clone <repoUrl> command.
2. To build from source, clone this repository and run 'mvn clean install'. This will produce a UrlMonitor-VERSION.zip in the target directory.
3. Unzip URLMonitor-VERSION.zip and copy the 'UrlMonitor' directory to <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/
4. Configure the extension by referring to the Configuration section.
5. Restart the Machine Agent.

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

Every AppDynamics extension has a monitor.xml file that configures the extension. In this case, the monitor.xml
for this extension just has a single option: the path where the extension can find the main config.yml file.
Note that the path is relative to $AGENT_HOME.

    <task-arguments>
      <argument name="config-file" is-required="true" default-value="monitors/UrlMonitor/config.yml" />
    </task-arguments>

The main configuration for this extension then lives in a file called config.yaml. It uses a simple syntax that anyone can edit with a simple text editor.
Note: Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. You may want to validate the yaml file using a yaml validator.

Here's a sample:

# Client level configurations, common across all sites to be monitored
clientConfig:
    maxConnTotal:    1000
    maxConnPerRoute: 1000
    maxRedirects: 10
    ignoreSslErrors: true
    userAgent:       Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AppDynamics UrlMonitor; http://www.appdynamics.com/)

defaultParams:
    method:          GET
    socketTimeout:   30000
    connectTimeout:  30000
    numAttempts:     1
#Sites that need to be monitored
sites:
 <span class="pl-c"><span class="pl-c">#</span>No authentication, with a pattern to match</span>

<span class="pl-c"><span class="pl-c">#</span> Basic Authentication with password encryption</span>

Examples

Increase the timeout threshold for a site that is often slow:

- name:             My Slow Site
  url:              http://www.wordpress.com
  connectTimeout:   60000

Supply a username and password for HTTP Basic authentication:

- name:            My Login Page
  url:             http://localhost:8090/controller/rest/applications
authtype:        BASIC
  username:        demouser@customer1
  password:        welcome

Retrieve the Google home page and make sure the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is visible:

- name:           Google
  url:            http://www.google.com
  matchPatterns:
    - name:       LuckyButton
      type:       substring
      pattern:    I'm Feeling Lucky

Retrieve the Google home page and count how many times the word "Mail" appears:

- name:           Google
  url:            http://www.google.com
  matchPatterns:
    - name:       MailCount
      type:       word
      pattern:    Mail

POST xml or json payload to any url and search for the patterns in the response

  - name:     My POST site
    url:      http://myposturl
    method:   POST
    headers:
          Content-Type: application/json
    requestPayloadFile: path/to/postrequestPayloadFile.json
    matchPatterns:
        - name:       Error
          type:       substring
          pattern:    Error 400

Configuration Reference

Client Config

The clientConfig section sets options for the HTTP client library, including:

Default Params

The defaultParams section sets the default options for all sites. These options can then be overriden
at the individual site level.

Site Section

ProxyConfig section

Auth Type

Match Pattern Section

The options for the pattern type are:

Metrics for match pattern appears under the following path:

Site->Pattern Matches -> Name of MatchPattern(As specified in config.yml) -> Count

Metrics Provided

In the AppDynamics Metric Browser, URL Monitor's metrics can be seen at: Application Infrastructure Performance | Tier-ID | Custom Metrics | URL Monitor

Following metrics are reported for each site:

• Average Response time (ms) -> The time after the request is sent until the first byte is received back.
• First Byte Time (ms) -> Time taken from the time the request build has started to receive the first response byte.
• Download Time (ms) -> Total time taken to receive the entire response from the URL.
• Response Bytes -> It represents the length of the response returned from the URL.
• Response Code -> It represents the HTTP status code returned from the URL.
• Status -> It represents whether the URL is FAILED(2), ERROR(3) or SUCCESS(4).
  Possible values are: UNKNOWN(0), FAILED(2), ERROR(3), SUCCESS(4)
• Responsive Count(Available at GroupName Level) -> Number of sites in a given group, that responded successfully.

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench

Troubleshooting

Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.

Version

Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.

Use Case