AppDynamics Monitoring Extension for use with AWS DynamoDB

Use Case

Captures DynamoDB statistics from Amazon CloudWatch and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Prerequisites

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. Please give the following permissions to the account being used to with the extension. cloudwatch:ListMetrics cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

3. In order to use this extension, you do need a Standalone JAVA Machine Agent or SIM Agent. For more details on downloading these products, please visit here.

4. The extension needs to be able to connect to AWS Cloudwatch in order to collect and send metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product, or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

1. Download and unzip AWSDynamoDBMonitor-<version>.zip file into <machine_agent_dir>/monitors/
directory. Do not place the extension in the extensions directory of your Machine Agent installation directory
2. The metricPrefix of the extension has to be configured as specified here. Please make sure that the right metricPrefix is chosen based on your machine agent deployment, otherwise this could lead to metrics not being visible in the controller.
3. Edit config.yml file in AWSDynamoDBMonitor and provide the required configuration (see Configuration section)
4. Restart the Machine Agent.

Configuration

In order to use the extension, you need to update the config.yml file that is present in the extension folder. The following is an explanation of the configurable fields that are present in the config.yml file.

1. The metricPrefix of the extension has to be configured as specified here. Please make sure that the right metricPrefix is chosen based on your machine agent deployment, otherwise this could lead to metrics not being visible in the controller.

2. Provide accessKey(required) and secretKey(required) of AWS account(s), also provide displayAccountName(any name that represents your account) and regions(required). If you are running this extension inside an EC2 instance which has IAM profile configured then awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey can be kept empty, extension will use IAM profile to authenticate.

   accounts:
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX1"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX1"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_1"
       regions: ["us-east-1","us-west-1","us-west-2"]
   
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX2"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX2"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_2"
       regions: ["eu-central-1","eu-west-1"]
   

3. If you want to encrypt the "awsAccessKey" and "awsSecretKey" then follow the "Credentials Encryption" section and provide the encrypted values in "awsAccessKey" and "awsSecretKey". Configure "enableDecryption" of "credentialsDecryptionConfig" to true and provide the encryption key in "encryptionKey" For example,

   #Encryption key for Encrypted password.
   credentialsDecryptionConfig:
       enableDecryption: "true"
       encryptionKey: "XXXXXXXX"
   

4. To report metrics from specific tables, configure includeTableNames which accepts comma separated values and regex patterns. If .* is used, all are monitored and if empty, none are monitored.

   includeTableNames: ["blog-*", "demodb"]
   

5. Configure the metrics section.

   For configuring the metrics, the following properties can be used:

   Property	Default value	Possible values	Description
   alias	metric name	Any string	The substitute name to be used in the metric browser instead of metric name.
   statType	"ave"	"AVERAGE", "SUM", "MIN", "MAX"	AWS configured values as returned by API
   aggregationType	"AVERAGE"	"AVERAGE", "SUM", "OBSERVATION"	Aggregation qualifier
   timeRollUpType	"AVERAGE"	"AVERAGE", "SUM", "CURRENT"	Time roll-up qualifier
   clusterRollUpType	"INDIVIDUAL"	"INDIVIDUAL", "COLLECTIVE"	Cluster roll-up qualifier
   multiplier	1	Any number	Value with which the metric needs to be multiplied.
   convert	null	Any key value map	Set of key value pairs that indicates the value to which the metrics need to be transformed. eg: UP:0, DOWN:1
   delta	false	true, false	If enabled, gives the delta values of metrics instead of actual values.

   For example,

   - name: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
     alias: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
     statType: "ave"
     delta: false
     multiplier: 1
     aggregationType: "AVERAGE"
     timeRollUpType: "AVERAGE"
     clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
   

   All these metric properties are optional, and the default value shown in the table is applied to the metric(if a property has not been specified) by default.

config.yml

Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go to Yaml Validator . On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Go” button on the bottom left.
If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Below is an example config for monitoring multiple accounts and regions:

metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|Amazon DynamoDB|"

accounts:
  - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX1"
    awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX1"
    displayAccountName: "TestAccount_1"
    regions: ["us-east-1","us-west-1","us-west-2"]

  - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX2"
    awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX2"
    displayAccountName: "TestAccount_2"
    regions: ["eu-central-1","eu-west-1"]

credentialsDecryptionConfig:
    enableDecryption: "false"
    encryptionKey:

proxyConfig:
    host:
    port:
    username:
    password:   
    
includeTableNames: []

cloudWatchMonitoring: "Basic"

concurrencyConfig:
  noOfAccountThreads: 3
  noOfRegionThreadsPerAccount: 3
  noOfMetricThreadsPerRegion: 3
  #Thread timeout in seconds
  threadTimeOut: 30 

metricsConfig:
    includeMetrics:
       - name: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
         alias: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
         statType: "ave"
         delta: false
         multiplier: 1
         aggregationType: "AVERAGE"
         timeRollUpType: "AVERAGE"
         clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
    metricsTimeRange:
      startTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 5
      endTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 0
    
    getMetricStatisticsRateLimit: 400

    maxErrorRetrySize: 0

Metrics

Typical metric path: Application Infrastructure Performance|<Tier>|Custom Metrics|Amazon DynamoDB|<Account Name>|<Region>|Table Name|<table name> followed by the metrics defined in the link below:

• DynamoDB Metrics

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

Support Tickets

If after going through the Troubleshooting Document you have not been able to get your extension working, please file a ticket and add the following information.

Please provide the following in order for us to assist you better.

1. Stop the running machine agent.
2. Delete all existing logs under <MachineAgent>/logs.
3. Please enable debug logging by editing the file <MachineAgent>/conf/logging/log4j.xml. Change the level value of the following elements to debug.
4. Start the machine agent and please let it run for 10 mins. Then zip and upload all the logs in the directory <MachineAgent>/logs/*.
5. Attach the zipped <MachineAgent>/conf/* directory here.
6. Attach the zipped <MachineAgent>/monitors/AWSDynamoDBMonitor directory here. For any support related questions, you can also contact help@appdynamics.com.

Contributing

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

Version

List of changes to this extension can be found here