{ "date": "2015-11-23T22:40:42", "slug": "trying-appdynamix-monitoring-application-from-user-to-database", "link": "https://www.dbi-services.com/blog/trying-appdynamix-monitoring-application-from-user-to-database/", "title": { "rendered": "Trying AppDynamix – monitoring application from user to database" }, "content": { "rendered": "

By Franck Pachot

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\nI like to come upon new monitoring software that help to go quickly from user response time to root cause. And I love applications that can be installed easily and at which I can give a try without reading pages of manual.

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At DOAG 3rd floor I’ve visited the AppDynamics booth and immediately wanted to install the trial version and give it a try.
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\n\"appdynamics\"

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Download and install

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From the AppDynamics website, there is a 15 days trial version that you can download. I’ve downloaded the Linux version (controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.zip) because I want to try it on our Oracle Tuning workshop VM. It’s 500MB and when you unzip you get two files:

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\noracle@vmoratun201:/tmp/appdynamics/ [DB1] unzip controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.zip\nArchive:  controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.zip\n  inflating: controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.sh\n  inflating: license.lic\n \noracle@vmoratun201:/tmp/appdynamics/ [DB1] ls -l\ntotal 1084416\n-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle oinstall 559790650 Nov 20 21:33 controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.sh\n-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle oinstall 550634894 Nov 23 20:35 controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.zip\n-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle oinstall      1997 Nov 22 12:43 license.lic\n
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Yes… a 500MB ‘.sh’ to run as a shell script. If you look at it, it embeds some binary code at the end of the script.
\n\"appdynamics002\"
\nFunny isn’t it? I like this idea…

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Then just run it

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\noracle@vmoratun201:/tmp/appdynamics/ [DB1] sh controller_64bit_linux-4.1.7.0.sh\nUnpacking JRE ...\nPreparing JRE ...\nStarting Installer ...\n
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You have a graphical wizard and after a few next-next-next you can connect to the server with a browser:
\n\"appdynamics011\"

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Monitoring database

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Then it’s very easy. Look at what you can monitor:

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\"appdynamics012\"
\nAnd I choose ‘database’.

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I have to set database type (Oracle) and the url of my controller.

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The wizard ask you download the database agent (dbagent-4.1.7.0.zip). I just get the url from there and download it in my VM with wget:

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\noracle@vmoratun201:/tmp/appdynamics/ [DB1] wget https://download.appdynamics.com/self_service/agent/dbagent/2\n--2015-11-23 21:30:12--  https://download.appdynamics.com/self_service/agent/dbagent/21cea4f9066d3131435bbf01\nResolving download.appdynamics.com... 54.244.244.230\nConnecting to download.appdynamics.com|54.244.244.230|:443... connected.\nHTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK\nLength: 39230821 (37M) [application/zip]\nSaving to: “dbagent-4.1.7.0.zip”\n \n36% [=======================>                                            ] 14,253,827   191K/s  eta 2m 4s\n
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Then follow the instructions:

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\nunzip dbagent-4.1.7.0.zip\njava -jar db-agent.jar \n
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The agent knows where is the controller (probably from the download url) and connects to it once started.
\nI am still in the wizard, waiting to receive that connection:
\n\"appdynamics013\"
\nand a few minutes later:
\n\"appdynamics014\"

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I really like those simple easy things… It tells you to wait 3 minutes and 3 minutes later you get it.

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The wizard asks connection information to my database (host, port, service, user, password) and it’s ready to monitor:

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\"appdynamics016\"

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Not very exiting yet? I’ve run SwingBench for few minutes.
\nLet’s click on ‘Metrics Browser’ and choose some statistics to monitor:

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\"Capture019\"

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\"appdynamics000\"And that’s only a small part of the product, after only one hour installing it and running it without reading any documentation.
\nIt can do lot more.
\nI’m running SwingBench here and it’s Java. I can monitor Java, from main calls to JDBC calls, and match it with the database time.

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This is the point: you drill down from the user response time through the profiling of the java methods, and when you are in a jdbc call, then you drill down to the database time. But that’s for future blog posts.

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