Product Updates
Find out the highlights from the latest release
Serverless APM for AWS Lambda: Limited Availability
We’re bringing the power of the AppDynamics end-to-end Business Transaction context to microservices deployed in the Amazon serverless environment. We have released a new special purpose “Serverless Compute” APM family, the first iteration of which is delivered in the form of a tracer library, focused on supporting AWS Lambda functions implemented in Java.
Explore Bucket-Level Metrics in Couchbase
Couchbase is a multi-model database, offering document-oriented and distributed key-value features. AppDynamics Database Visibility 4.5.0 focused on support for document-oriented use-cases; this new feature gives full visibility into both models, with deep-dive drill down into bucket level metrics and other KPI’s required to monitor and manage a distributed key-value store. Read the documentation for details.
Diagnose Deadlocks with Database Blocking Sessions
AppDynamics Database Visibility has been updated to offer enhanced visibility of locking and blocking in supported relational database environments. Enhancements include the ability to view and analyze more locking events, show increased details of the lock type and locked object, and show the query text of the blocking session (when available). Read the documentation for details.
Manage Business Journeys and Experience Levels
Role-based Access Control (RBAC) is now available for Business Journeys and Experience Level Management (XLM). This new capability will allow customers to manage who has access and manage what data they have access to for Business Journeys and XLM. RBAC strengthens data security and safeguards against data leakage. Read the documentation for details.
Monitor New Ruby Agent
The New Ruby Agent supports MRI Ruby 2.3+
Ruby agent supports any Linux distribution based on glibc 2.5+
Supports Rail, Sinatra, Grape, and Sidekiq frameworks
Supports Redis Cache
NetHTTP, Excon, Faraday, and HTTPClient Exit Points
Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch
Introducing Cognition Engine - AI and ML Powers Automated Anomaly Detection and Root Cause Analysis
Anomaly Detection and Automated Root Cause Analysis are AI-powered features designed to reduce Mean Time To Resolutionfor application performance problems. Anomaly Detection automatically tells you if every Business Transaction in your application is performing normally. Automated Root Cause Analysis helps you quickly determine the root cause of problems revealed by Anomaly Detection. Learn more about Cognition Engine or read the full documentation for details.
Track Your User’s Interactions Across An Entire Session with New Mobile Sessions API and UI Enhancements
Gain additional insight into your users' actions using the new SessionFrames API, supported in v50.1 of the iOS Agent. This enables you to use business-specific context to break down user workflows. We are working to expand this API to other Mobile Agents soon. The Mobile Sessions UI has also been simplified to make it easier to digest information. Read the documentation for details.
Encrypt Sensitive Text in the Analytics Agent
Organizations with advanced security policies now have the ability to encrypt sensitive text, including credentials, with Analytics Agent v4.5.7. This allows for multi-layered security for passwords stored in the different properties. Read the documentation for details.
Native Support for Multi-Buildpack Solidifies AppD on Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Starting with v4.6.x of AppDynamics Application Performance Monitoring for PCF, the AppDynamics extension buildpack (appbuildpack) offers multi-buildpack support for .NET Core on Linux, .NET Core and .NET Framework on Windows (.NET HWC), Python, and Golang applications. This allows for a single unified workflow for instrumenting your applications regardless of your language or framework and helps you release new AppDynamics features faster. Read the full documentation for details.
Support Modern Java Applications With New Java Framework
Java Agent v4.5.8 adds support for IBM BPM v8.6, enabling you to continue tracking the technical and business performance of your BPM processes as you upgrade to the latest version of IBM BPM. We’ve also added native support for auto-instrumenting applications built using the new WebFlux and WebClient components of version 5 of the Spring Framework, providing end-to-end visibility for the most modern generation of Spring-based web applications. The Java Agent now also provides out-of-the-box support for HTTP Business Transaction flows through Oracle OSB, extending AppDynamics’ end-to-end transaction visibility through this commonly deployed ESB. Read the documentation for details.
PHP Agent v4.5.7 adds out-of-the-box transaction naming support for the Laravel and CakePHP 3.x frameworks. With these additions, owners of applications built with all of the popular PHP frameworks and any current version of the PHP runtime can experience AppDynamics' famous time-to-value and end-to-end Business Transaction monitoring. Read the full documentation for a complete list of PHP supported environments.
Support for Azure SQL Managed Instance
Gain insight into your Azure SQL Managed Instance with AppDynamics Database Visibility. Starting in v4.5.7, you can configure Microsoft SQL Server Collectors to monitor events in Azure SQL. Read the full documentation for details.
Exert More Control Over Your Mobile Sessions
In order to provide you with more control over your mobile sessions, we’re introducing a new API that can be used to define when a session starts and stops. For example, if capturing a mobile session after a period of user inactivity isn’t relevant to your organization but capturing it after a particular network request is, you can customize the session stop definition to suit your needs. Read the full documentation Android, iOS, Xamarin, and Cordova for details.
Monitor .NET Core for Linux With Latest .NET Agent
We are excited to announce support for .NET Core on Linux! After running through a beta program, we are making our first version of .NET Agent v4.5.7 for Linux available to the public. This release includes coverage for multiple distribution versions, including CentOS, Debian, and Alpine. Based on customer feedback, we included a sample Dockerfile to help you integrate the agent into your application deployment faster. Look out for a Pivotal Cloud Foundry buildpack in the future. We are not going to stop here — the plan is to continue adding more features and extend coverage with every monthly agent release! Read the full documentation for details.
Installing Business IQ On Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) Just Got Easier
To separate the task of configuring application performance monitoring and analytics, we've introduced a third tile on the Pivotal Network specifically for application analytics. With this tile, you can deploy an Analytics Agent in the PCF environment to report transactional analytics to your Controller. Additionally, the Extension Buildpack now supports the Java Agent, allowing for advanced configuration and the masking of sensitive information. For details, visit the Application Performance Monitoring, Platform Monitoring, and Application Analytics for PCF Release Notes. You can also check out the latest blog post.
Sync AppDynamics Metrics Into ServiceNow
We’re excited to introduce v3 of the AppDynamics and ServiceNow integration, which offers support for ServiceNow Operational Intelligence. Using the AppDynamics-ServiceNow Data Sync, metrics will flow directly from your AppDynamics Controller to your ServiceNow instances. Take advantage of ServiceNow features like anomaly detection and alerting for automated ITSM and ITOM workflows driven by deeper insights into your infrastructure and applications. For details on the integration, functionality, and metrics, check out our latest blog.
PHP Support for Transaction Analytics
Customers with PHP applications can now correlate performance data to business outcomes with AppDynamics Business iQ (previously available to only Java, .NET and Node.js users). With Business iQ, teams have access to a single, flexible platform that ingests, correlates, and visualizes real-time business and application performance data streaming from end-user devices, applications, and infrastructure.
Service Installer for Database Visibility on Windows
To simplify the installation process, you can now run a script to install the Database Agent as a Windows Service instead of having to launch Database Monitoring via the command line. Read the full documentation for details on installing the Database Agent.
To run the database agent as a Windows Service, run the following command as an administrator:
A Windows Services named "AppDynamics Database Agent" will be created. The screenshot below shows the Windows Service Control Manager.
Additional Metrics for MongoDB
We’ve enhanced MongoDB metric collection by introducing four new metrics that will help you dig deeper into Node state changes and Replication performance:
- Replication_MyState
- OplogTimeDiff_in_sec
- Oplog_Size
- Oplog_Max_Size
Read the full documentation for information on all MongoDB Server Metrics.
Synthetic Monitoring for On-Premises Customers
The first offering for Synthetics Monitoring is now available for our on-premises customers. This release of the synthetics server - together with the latest update of the synthetic private agent - enables on-premises customers to monitor the availability of their internal website and applications.
The following diagram shows the connections and data flow between the on-premises Synthetic Server, EUM Server, and Synthetic Agents.
Plot IoT Data by Geographic Area
You can now review geolocation data on your IoT Dashboard to get deeper insights into the performance of your devices by geographic area. Build custom widgets to visualize the data in a representation that works best for your organization. Read our full documentation on monitoring IoT applications.
Health Rules for Network Visibility Metrics
We’ve added a new health rule - Advanced Network - which allows you to easily set health rules for metrics related to network activity, such as PIE (performance impact events), zero window, data retransmission, and errors. This will enhance your ability to see how every application and user is behaving on your network.
ADQL String Manipulation Functions
AppDynamics users who have collected data in the wrong structure, type, serialization, or format have previously needed to adjust their agent settings to specifically focus on potentially interesting insights. Starting in 4.5.2, Business iQ ADQL users have access to string manipulation functions, which empower ad-hoc data transformation for all event data in the analytics event service. With string information functions which return string length() and the indexOf() certain characters in a string, users can easily hone in on a substring(), combine multiple strings with the concat() operator, and trim() out unnecessary repeated characters from the beginning and ends of fields.
EUM Correlation for Vert.x Framework
Our customers can now get the benefit of correlation End User Monitoring visibility and Business Transaction visibility with applications built on the Vert.x framework.
IBM Integration Bus Agent Auto-Discovery and Monitoring of Database Calls
The IBM Integration Bus Agent now automatically detects and monitors database interactions within flows, highlighting the impact of database performance on the performance of Business Transactions flowing through the IIB broker. Read the full documentation for details on the IIB Agent.
Out of the Box Support for Jetty HTTP Client Versions 8 and 9
We now offer out of the box configuration for the Jetty HTTP client which is frequently used within Java applications. Our configuration has been enhanced to provide automatic detection and correlation for versions 8 and 9 of the Jetty Client.
Machine Agent Independent Release
Starting in 4.5.2, you can take advantage of the newest Machine Agent enhancements and bug fixes without waiting for a Controller upgrade. The latest Machine Agents are backwards compatible with any 4.4.0+ Controller, so you can upgrade your agents while upgrading your Controller at a time that works best for you.
.NET Core
With Summer ‘18, we have released full support for .NET Core Agent for Windows so you can easily monitor .NET Core applications running on cloud, hybrid, or on-premise architectures. This lightweight and reliable agent provides full-stack and cross-stack visibility into your application and business performance by collecting infrastructure and end-user metrics. In addition, we are now supporting the Microsoft Orleans framework so customers can more easily track transactions as they move from Orleans Silos to clients. Finally, we have released an SDK for .NET Core for Linux.
Couchbase DB Support
NoSQL databases can be a critical component when developing modern applications that need to deliver simple, high performance data transactions to provide the best possible customer experience. AppDynamics has added support for Couchbase DB in an effort to provide comprehensive monitoring for the entire life of a business transaction including at the database level.
Example of a Couchbase dashboard
Browser Monitoring
We have made several updates to Browser Real User Monitoring to speed up performance analysis. First, we now display a percentile time-series for End User Response Time, so you can quickly see if the majority of your users are experiencing a slowdown, or just a few unlucky ones. Second, we introduced the concept of “Impact Score” for each page, device, browser, and country. If you see that one factor is disproportionately impacted, you can get to the root-cause much faster. Finally, we added resource timing waterfalls for every pageview, so you can always zoom in from a high-level symptom to the root-cause without interruption.
We have added support for single page applications using Javascript frameworks like Angular, React.js and others so that these “virtual” pages are easier to monitor and troubleshoot. This support is optionally available now to anyone who needs to monitor these types of pages.
Viewing various page requests from a single page app built with Angular. Virtual page loads are shown with a “v” in the Type column.
Java Async Applications
We have released improvements to our Java agent that surface asynchronous calls and allow you to drill down into the timing of all the various activities that are happening in your application. This is especially helpful when using our new waterfall view of a particular application snapshot as you can see the overlapping requests that occurred throughout that period of time. Also included in the latest Java agent is support for IBM Business Process Management software so users can analyze the performance and impact of the business processes that are critical to them.
Business Journey Updates
Last November, AppDynamics released a feature called Business Journeys which helps companies track and monitor complex business processes by combining several distinct but related interactions that a end-user has into a single view. We have now improved this capability by adding dashboarding and reporting functionality on top of this view along with custom events to make it easier to visualize exactly how your business processes are performing so you can take action sooner and provide a more consistent experience for the users of your applications.
This Business Journey shows how long it takes to approve a loan.
Mobile Apps
There are more ways than ever to build applications for mobile devices. Sometimes it is more efficient for teams to code their apps in Javascript or other languages and then use tools such as Ionic framework, GoodBarber, and Appy Pie to convert them into apps which run on mobile devices. We now offer better support for non-native/hybrid apps so that app teams can leverage the full performance monitoring capabilities of AppDynamics.
Monitoring a non-native mobile app with AppDynamics.
IoT Devices
We now provide business transaction correlation for IoT devices to provide more context for devices that may have an impact to an application framework or end user experience. We have also released our IoT C/C++ agent under the Apache 2.0 Open Source license. In the fast changing and growing landscape of IoT, this will allow companies to change and improve the code more quickly in order get their particular IoT device data into AppDynamics.
Quickly correlate business transaction issues with IoT devices in flow maps
Network Visibility
We have made troubleshooting network problems easier by adding quick access to network metrics to the snapshot view. Reporting affected network nodes is easier than ever with the new ability to copy IP address information directly from the user interface so you can slack or email that information to a network specialist. You will notice other enhancements to the UI as you use the product as well. In addition, you can now install the network visibility extension for our machine agent.
AppDynamics network visibility dashboard
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
We released our Service Broker Tile and latest buildpacks for Java, Python, Go and .NET. The tile was completely rewritten to support all the latest Pivotal Service Broker APIs, and now adds support for Cloud Foundry's Loggregator System for detailed metrics on the health of the underlying infrastructure.
Kubernetes
We announced the general availability of Kubernetes integration. AppDynamics for Kubernetes gives organizations the deepest visibility into application and business performance. Customers get unparalleled insights into containerized applications, Kubernetes clusters, Docker containers, and underlying infrastructure metrics—all through a single pane of glass.
To gather performance metrics for any resource, AppDynamics leverages labels,the identifying metadata and foundation for grouping, searching, filtering and managing Kubernetes objects. This enables organizations to gather performance insights and set intelligent thresholds and alerts for the performance of Pods, Namespace, ReplicaSets, Services, Deployment and other Kubernetes labels.
Single Page Application (SPA) v2.0
We released SPA v2.0 monitoring capabilities, with improved out of the box support for most modern SPA frameworks and additional benefits including:
- Angular (All versions) and React
- Ability to on board new frameworks without requiring additional changes
- Accurately capture end-user response time across all virtual pages
- Faster implementation and lower TCO
.NET Core for Windows Server
We announced the general availability of the AppDynamics .NET Core agent for Windows addressing three key operational characteristics - performance, flexibility, and functionality. As companies modernize monolithic applications and increasingly shift parts of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, AppDynamics .Net Core for Windows ensure deep visibility into rapidly evolving production, testing, and development environments.
SAP Monitoring
We announced a new product line that enables troubleshooting and business visibility of SAP business applications on our unified monitoring platform. AppDynamics for SAP not only sees the transactions but also drills down to lines of ABAP code to identify specifically where the slowness is occurring, along with surfacing slow database queries. This solution supports unified monitoring of several SAP solutions, including those business applications on traditional databases running under SAP ECC, along with SAP business applications running HANA sidecars and SAP’s premiere offering, S/4HANA.
Business Journeys
With AppDynamics Business Journeys, application teams can link multiple, distributed business events into a single process that reflects the way customers interact with the business. Business events can include transaction, log, mobile, browser, synthetics, or custom events and are long-running, from hours to days.
Experience Level Management (XLM)
With XLM, enterprises can establish custom service-level thresholds by customer segment, location, or device. XLM also provides an immutable audit for service-level agreements with your customers or internal business units. The product images below show the service levels setup for a connected streaming device, giving an instant view on how services are performing against set SLAs.
Network Visibility
We announced the general availability of Network Visibility, enabling enterprises to understand the impact that the network is having on application and business performance. Network performance measurements are automatically correlated with application performance in the context of the Business Transaction.
Docker Visibility
Docker container metadata and metrics are now first class citizens within AppDynamics. Our standalone machine agent collects CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network metrics to help isolate performance problems in production.
Heat Maps
Heat Maps show cross tier correlation which massively simplifies the comparison of load distributions and identifying performance outliers. For example, during a canary release, a new version of your application might have CPU, memory, or disk issues.
Heat Maps dramatically simplify the identification of performance issues in large microservice environments allowing for more effective canary release strategies.
In the bottom chart we can see one node which sticks out from the rest when it comes to the number of pages paged out.
Mobile Screenshots
Our mobile real user monitoring solution allows developers to capture screenshots during key user interactions to understand, at a deeper level, how users behave within your application. These screenshots provide context to the user session and make it easier to debug issues and improve user experience.
While investigating a mobile user session, you can now optionally capture a screenshot directly from the user’s mobile application. A pink dot indicates where users tapped or swiped within the application.
ServiceNow Integration
With our new ServiceNow integration, IT service managers can now view AppDynamics configuration items in ServiceNow. This allows service managers to correlate infrastructure problems to a specific business transaction. This crucial context allows teams to better prioritize events and incidents and focus on problems that impact user experience.
AppDynamics configuration items such as the application Flow Map can now be pushed directly to ServiceNow and synchronized based on a preset schedule.
JIRA Integration
Our two-way integration with JIRA automatically creates and update JIRA tickets when AppDynamics Health Rules are violated. IT teams can view ticket info within AppDynamics war rooms which results in faster developer resolution.
When a Health Rule in AppDynamics is violated, a ticket gets automatically created in JIRA with a link directly back to the affected Business Transaction.