How to Run AppDynamics in Microsoft Azure

October 02 2014
 

Learn how you can leverage AppDynamics for your Microsoft Azure IaaS. Read More


“Is it possible to run the AppDynamics controller within my own Microsoft Azure IaaS?”

I hear this question fairly regularly and would like to walk you through how to host the controller in your own Azure cloud. First off, the pros of having AppDynamics with Azure:

  • Have full control and ownership of the data collected by AppDynamics
  • Provide additional security to access the data (for example, lock it down to a corporate VPN only).
  • Enable easy integration between AppDynamics and your services, such as Active Directory for authentication or internal bug tracking system for alert notifications. These would typically require opening custom ports when you leverage the AppDynamics SaaS environment.
  • AppDynamics works by placing an agent running on your servers which reports to the controller. It’s common to have several agents monitoring your applications. To further the ease of use, we monitor Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, and now, C++ all in one single pane of glass. Your Azure architecture might look something like this:

    Screen Shot 2014-09-24 at 3.32.03 PM
    A unique feature for AppDynamics is flexible deployment. Typically, legacy APM solutions rely on on-premise deployment, whereas newer companies are Saas-only. At AppDynamics you can run the controller on-premise, leverage the AppDynamics SaaS option, or deploy a hybrid mixture.

    To run the controller in your Azure IaaS you can leverage the security of the on-premise deployment option and install the controller the same way as if you would in your datacenter. This allows you to have full control over the your data and be the gatekeeper to access that data.

    Important to note:

  • Properly size the controller — you can estimate the CPU/memory/disk requirements based on number of agents you are going to deploy. This is covered in the AppDynamics online documentation.
  • Configure the VM for maximum I/O.
  • The second is very important to configure as the controller installs a database which requires high I/O throughput. The recommended best practice is to treat the VM the same as you would be running a SQL server on it. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn133149.aspx

    If you forget to do this, you run the risk that the performance of the controller will slow down. This will not slow down your monitored applications as the agents are implemented to be non-blocking. However, the slowness will cause controller UI to lag and hard to visualize the collected data.

    Hope this helps and you can choose the option which works the best for your organization! Try it out now, for FREE!

    Alex Fedotyev
    Alex Fedotyev is a seasoned APM expert with over 10 years of .NET experience. Alex currently works in sales engineering at AppDynamics and is a major contributor to the .NET monitoring product architecture and roadmap. Alex blogs regularly at http://alexfedotyev.wordpress.com/

    Thank you! Your submission has been received!

    Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form