Monitoring Appdynamics

AppDynamics Monitoring Skill

Monitor and analyze application performance using the AppDynamics REST API.

API Conventions

Authentication

AppDynamics uses Basic auth (user@account:password) or OAuth token — injected by connection.

Base URL

• Controller: https://<controller>.saas.appdynamics.com/controller/
• Use connection-injected APPD_BASE_URL.

Output Rules

• TOKEN EFFICIENCY: Target <=50 lines per output
• Use jq to extract metric values and entity names
• NEVER dump full metric trees — always filter to relevant nodes

Core Helper Function

#!/bin/bash

appd_api() {
    local endpoint="$1"
    local params="${2:-}"
    curl -s -u "${APPD_USER}@${APPD_ACCOUNT}:${APPD_PASSWORD}" \
        "${APPD_BASE_URL}/controller/rest${endpoint}${params:+?${params}}" \
        -H "Content-Type: application/json"
}

appd_metric() {
    local app="$1"
    local metric_path="$2"
    local duration="${3:-60}"  # minutes
    appd_api "/applications/${app}/metric-data" \
        "metric-path=$(python3 -c "import urllib.parse; print(urllib.parse.quote('${metric_path}'))")&time-range-type=BEFORE_NOW&duration-in-mins=${duration}&output=JSON"
}

Parallel Execution

{
    appd_api "/applications" "output=JSON" &
    appd_api "/applications/${APP_NAME}/tiers" "output=JSON" &
    appd_api "/applications/${APP_NAME}/business-transactions" "output=JSON" &
}
wait

Anti-Hallucination Rules

NEVER assume application names, tier names, BT names, or metric paths. ALWAYS discover first.

Phase 1: Discovery

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== Applications ==="
appd_api "/applications" "output=JSON" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.id)\t\(.name)"' | head -20

echo ""
echo "=== Tiers for Application ==="
APP="${1:?Application name required}"
appd_api "/applications/${APP}/tiers" "output=JSON" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.id)\t\(.name)\t\(.type)\tnodes:\(.numberOfNodes)"'

echo ""
echo "=== Business Transactions ==="
appd_api "/applications/${APP}/business-transactions" "output=JSON" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.id)\t\(.tierName)\t\(.name)"' | head -20

Common Operations

Application Flow Map & Health

#!/bin/bash
APP="${1:?Application name required}"

echo "=== Application Health ==="
{
    echo "--- Tiers ---"
    appd_api "/applications/${APP}/tiers" "output=JSON" \
        | jq -r '.[] | "\(.name)\tnodes:\(.numberOfNodes)\ttype:\(.type)"' &

    echo "--- Overall Metrics (last 15m) ---"
    appd_metric "$APP" "Overall Application Performance|Average Response Time (ms)" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[0] | "Avg Response Time: \(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")ms"' &

    appd_metric "$APP" "Overall Application Performance|Calls per Minute" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[0] | "Calls/min: \(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")"' &

    appd_metric "$APP" "Overall Application Performance|Errors per Minute" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[0] | "Errors/min: \(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")"' &
}
wait

Business Transaction Analysis

#!/bin/bash
APP="${1:?Application name required}"

echo "=== Top Business Transactions by Response Time ==="
appd_metric "$APP" "Business Transaction Performance|Business Transactions|*|Average Response Time (ms)" 60 \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.metricPath | split("|")[2])\t\(.metricValues[0].value // 0)ms"' \
    | sort -t$'\t' -k2 -rn | head -15

echo ""
echo "=== BTs with High Error Rate ==="
appd_metric "$APP" "Business Transaction Performance|Business Transactions|*|Errors per Minute" 60 \
    | jq -r '.[] | select(.metricValues[0].value > 0) | "\(.metricPath | split("|")[2])\t\(.metricValues[0].value) errors/min"' \
    | sort -t$'\t' -k2 -rn | head -10

echo ""
echo "=== BT Call Volume ==="
appd_metric "$APP" "Business Transaction Performance|Business Transactions|*|Calls per Minute" 60 \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.metricPath | split("|")[2])\t\(.metricValues[0].value // 0) calls/min"' \
    | sort -t$'\t' -k2 -rn | head -10

Tier & Node Health

#!/bin/bash
APP="${1:?Application name required}"
TIER="${2:?Tier name required}"

echo "=== Tier Health: ${TIER} ==="
{
    appd_metric "$APP" "Application Infrastructure Performance|${TIER}|Individual Nodes|*|Agent|App|Availability" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[] | "\(.metricPath | split("|")[3])\tavailability:\(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")"' &

    echo "--- Tier Response Time ---"
    appd_metric "$APP" "Application Infrastructure Performance|${TIER}|Average Response Time (ms)" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[0] | "Avg Response Time: \(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")ms"' &

    echo "--- Tier CPU ---"
    appd_metric "$APP" "Application Infrastructure Performance|${TIER}|Individual Nodes|*|Hardware Resources|CPU|%Busy" 15 \
        | jq -r '.[] | "\(.metricPath | split("|")[3])\tCPU:\(.metricValues[0].value // "N/A")%"' &
}
wait

Health Rule Violations

#!/bin/bash
APP="${1:?Application name required}"

echo "=== Health Rule Violations (last 1h) ==="
FROM=$(( $(date +%s) * 1000 - 3600000 ))
TO=$(( $(date +%s) * 1000 ))

appd_api "/applications/${APP}/problems/healthrule-violations" \
    "output=JSON&time-range-type=BETWEEN_TIMES&start-time=${FROM}&end-time=${TO}" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.severity)\t\(.name)\t\(.affectedEntityDefinition.name)\t\(.status)"' | head -15

echo ""
echo "=== Active Health Rules ==="
appd_api "/applications/${APP}/healthrules" "output=JSON" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.id)\t\(.name)\t\(.enabled)"' | head -20

Error Analysis

#!/bin/bash
APP="${1:?Application name required}"

echo "=== Top Errors (last 1h) ==="
appd_metric "$APP" "Overall Application Performance|Exceptions per Minute" 60 \
    | jq -r '.[0] | "Total Exceptions/min: \(.metricValues[0].value // 0)"'

echo ""
echo "=== Error Transactions ==="
appd_api "/applications/${APP}/business-transactions" "output=JSON" \
    | jq -r '.[] | "\(.id)\t\(.name)"' | while IFS=$'\t' read id name; do
    errors=$(appd_metric "$APP" "Business Transaction Performance|Business Transactions|${name}|Errors per Minute" 60 \
        | jq -r '.[0].metricValues[0].value // 0')
    [ "$errors" != "0" ] && echo "$name: $errors errors/min"
done | sort -t: -k2 -rn | head -10

Output Format

Present results as a structured report:

Monitoring Appdynamics Report
═════════════════════════════
Resources discovered: [count]

Resource       Status    Key Metric    Issues
──────────────────────────────────────────────
[name]         [ok/warn] [value]       [findings]

Summary: [total] resources | [ok] healthy | [warn] warnings | [crit] critical
Action Items: [list of prioritized findings]

Target ≤50 lines of output. Use tables for multi-resource comparisons.

Counter-Rationalizations

Common Pitfalls

• Metric path separator: Use | pipe character — Overall Application Performance|Average Response Time (ms)
• URL encoding: Metric paths with spaces and pipes must be URL-encoded in query parameters
• Time format: Uses milliseconds since epoch for time ranges — multiply Unix seconds by 1000
• Output format: Always add output=JSON parameter — default is XML
• Wildcard queries: Use * in metric paths to get all children — Business Transactions|*|Calls per Minute
• Rate limits: Controller-dependent — typically 200 calls/min for SaaS controllers
• Auth format: user@account:password — account name is required in Basic auth
• Baseline data: Baselines need 2+ weeks of data — new applications may not have baseline metrics