Agents and Controller | How it works

What are agents and the controller?

AppDynamics agents are plug-ins or extensions that monitor the performance of your application code, runtime, and behavior. They’re deployed to every corner of your application environment, from devices, to containers and hosts, to applications.

The AppDynamics controller receives metrics from agents and sends them instructions. All of this performance activity is displayed via the Controller UI, which allows you to view data insights from multiple applications in one place.

How agents deliver precision insights

Once deployed, Agents immediately monitor every line of code. Unique tags are assigned to every method call and every request header. This allows AppDynamics to trace every transaction from start to finish — even in modern, distributed applications.

Supported platforms: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and multi-cloud.

How the controller helps resolve issues, fast

The Controller is updated in real-time, even in hyper-complex applications with thousands of Agents, helping you monitor, troubleshoot and analyze your entire application landscape — from backend infrastructure to the end user — in one simple interface.

Some of the languages we support

C++

GO

Java

.NET

Node.js

PHP

Python

Learn more about our Supported Technologies

Learn how AppDynamics helps you be proactive and align your organization around the insights most impacting your business.

Data Collection

Data collection begins with AppDynamics Agents and the Controller. Agents are plug-ins or extensions sitting across your entire application ecosystem that monitor the performance of your application code, runtime, and behavior. The Controllers receive real time performance data from the agents, visualize your application performance, and send instructions to the agents.

Learn more about Agents and Controllers

Auto-Discovery and Mapping

AppDynamics auto-discovers the flow of all traffic requests in your environment and dynamically creates a topology map to visualize performance across the application ecosystem.

Learn more about Auto-Discovery and Mapping

Digital Experience Monitoring

Closely follow the digital experience of your users and get ahead of issues with web, mobile or synthetic transaction monitoring. Monitor key metrics across any device, browser or third-party service to make sure emerging issues don't become major problems.

Learn more about End User Monitoring

Business Transaction Monitoring

AppDynamics observes and supports key business transactions which are made up of all the services that fulfill and deliver user-initiated requests. Business transactions include critical user experiences like logins, shopping cart additions and checkouts that drive revenue and conversion.

Learn more about Business Transaction Monitoring

Anomaly Detection

Baseline performance and set alerts to identify and resolve issues before your customers or employees notice. AppDynamics anomaly detection ensures that no issue escapes detection with immediate, automated alerts.

Learn more about Anomaly Detection

Root Cause Diagnostics

Focus on supporting optimal business outcomes and reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) with insights that help your IT teams prioritize and resolve the most problematic business transactions in seconds, before they impact the user experience.

Learn more about Diagnostics

Full-Stack Analytics

Make better decisions immediately with the most useful transaction and end user data impacting key metrics like conversion and revenue. Observe what matters most to the bottom line and take quick action to stay ahead of your digital transformation goals.

Learn more about Analytics

Custom dashboarding

In just a few clicks, build custom dashboards with AppDynamics Dash Studio featuring a modern, highly customizable and easy-to-read interface. Get application performance insights across your full stack, now including ThousandEyes network intelligence for unparalleled visibility.

Learn more about Custom Data Visualization (Dash Studio)