In today’s interconnected digital landscape, the synergy between network performance and application health is pivotal for delivering exceptional user experiences. The integration of Cisco ThousandEyes and AppDynamics marks a significant stride towards this goal, combining the power of comprehensive network visibility and advanced application performance monitoring. By seamlessly uniting these two technologies, organizations can now holistically monitor, analyze, and optimize their entire digital ecosystem, ensuring optimal performance, swift issue resolution, and elevated user satisfaction.

What You’ll Learn

• Benefits of integrating ThousandEyes and AppDynamics for achieving a holistic view of your digital ecosystem
• Step-by-step instructions for setting up the integration between ThousandEyes and AppDynamics
• Real-world use cases illustrating the value of the integrated solution in optimizing user experiences and minimizing downtime
• Fundamental principles of network performance monitoring and application performance management

What You’ll Need

• Access to a computer or device with a reliable internet connection
• Basic familiarity with network concepts and application performance monitoring
• An active ThousandEyes account with administrative privileges
• An active AppDynamics CSaaS account with administrative or appropriate access rights
• An application that is being successfully monitored in the AppDynamics GUI:
  • For this guide, I made use of a Kubernetes application running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). There are guides in Cisco U. to help you stand up this Kubernetes cluster (see: AppDynamics Auto-Instrumentation via Helm)

Basic Architecture Diagram

In order to get started with the ThousandEyes and AppDynamics integration, we need to ensure that we have administrative privileges.

Product Version Requirements

To ensure the successful integration of ThousandEyes and AppDynamics, your AppDynamics instance must be CSaaS (controller as a service) and running build 23.4.x.

AppDynamics Permissions

In your AppDynamics environment, it’s important to have the necessary permissions to enable the integration smoothly. Specifically, you must have the Manage Events permission within AppDynamics.

1. Navigate to the gear icon, and then click Administration.
2. Create the role for events:

3. Ensure that the role has the Manage Events permission.
4. Apply that role to your AppDynamics user:

ThousandEyes Permissions

For the creation of the integration between ThousandEyes and AppDynamics, it’s essential to have either an Organization Admin or an Account Admin role within the ThousandEyes platform. This level of access ensures that you have the required privileges to set up and manage the integration effectively. (My account already had the needed permissions.)

1. Navigate to Users and Roles.
2. Validate that your user has these roles applied.
3. If the role is not on your account, navigate to Roles and create the needed permissions.
4. Apply that role to your user.

Creating Your Integration

To establish a bidirectional integration with AppDynamics, follow these steps within the ThousandEyes platform:

1. Navigate to Integrations > + New integration > AppDynamics.

2. In the Add AppDynamics Integration dialog, input the relevant values for your AppDynamics instance:

   • Name:
   • AppDynamics URL Instance:
   • AppDynamics Username: Username@Email@AppDynamics tenant name (you must follow this provided syntax)
   • AppDynamics Password:
   • Select Services: Choose Test Recommendations.

3. After filling in the fields, click Test to initiate the integration testing process.

4. If the testing is successful, click Save to finalize the integration setup.

5. You can observe your completed integration on the Integrations screen. Take note of its status in the Status column as well as the services you selected in the Supported Services column.

6. Once the Status column displays Connected, your integration is ready, and you can begin utilizing the ThousandEyes test recommendations.

Creating Recommended Tests

Now that the integration is established, it’s time to put it into action: The connection between AppDynamics and ThousandEyes enriches the ThousandEyes platform with insights about the services monitored through AppDynamics. This integration empowers the ThousandEyes platform to provide recommendations for tests and test configurations, granting you comprehensive visibility into these services.

To configure the recommended tests, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Cloud & Enterprise Agents > Test Settings.

2. Click the drop-down arrow next to the Add New Test button, and choose Add From Recommendations.

3. The Recommendations dialog will appear, listing applications monitored in AppDynamics.

4. Choose from the list of dependent services, then click Configure Tests.

5. The settings configured in the Global Settings tab will apply to all tests being created for the selected services.

6. Select the agents that will execute the tests you’re setting up. Use the built-in labels in the agent selection drop-down for a quick selection.

7. For back-end services, it’s recommended to use Enterprise Agents for monitoring, while for front-end services, Cloud Agents are recommended. For more details about agent types and differences, refer to the documentation on Global Vantage Points. Because we are using a Kubernetes application, I made use of the following Kubernetes deployment files to deploy a ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent into my Kubernetes cluster. These files are available from the following GitHub repository:

• https://github.com/justinhauer/Thousand-Eyes-kubernetes

metadata:
  annotations:
  namespace: [name of your namespace]
  name: thousandeyes
  labels:
    app: thoudsandeyes
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: thoudsandeyes
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: thoudsandeyes
    spec:
      hostname: [hostname that you want to show in thousand eyes dashboard]
      containers:
       - name: thousandeyes
         image: 'thousandeyes/enterprise-agent:latest'
         imagePullPolicy: Always
         command:
          - /sbin/my_init
         securityContext:
           capabilities:
             add:
               - NET_ADMIN
               - SYS_ADMIN
         env:
           - name: TEAGENT_ACCOUNT_TOKEN
             valueFrom:
              secretKeyRef:
                name: te-creds
                key: TEAGENT_ACCOUNT_TOKEN
           - name: TEAGENT_INET
             value: "4"
         resources:
             limits:
               memory: 3584Mi
             requests:
               memory: 2000Mi
      restartPolicy: Always

apiVersion: v1
data:
  TEAGENT_ACCOUNT_TOKEN: [your base64 encoded account token]
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: te-creds
type: Opaque

8. Set the desired frequency for the test execution.

9. Provide a name for your monitoring package. By default, this field is populated with the application name from AppDynamics. Then, click Review.

10. On the final dialog screen, review your selections, including the resources such as tests and labels that will be generated. Click Deploy Now and then Done.

Viewing Your Test Data

After setting up the recommended tests, it’s time to access and review the test results.

With your AppDynamics bidirectional integration, you gain access to both Views 2.0 and the legacy functionality in Views 1.0.

Note: It will take some time for data to be gathered and then to show up in the AppDynamics GUI.

1. Navigate to Views > your created Kubernetes service tests (in this case, coolsox - catalogue and coolsox - user). This will show you some metrics that the agents are collecting on our service.

2. On this screen, you can see that some data from the automatically created tests will be presented. Some of these metrics include:

• Loss
• Latency
• Uptime

3. Navigate to Dashboards > AppDynamics application name (in this case, coolsox).

4. View the data that has been gathered from the tests that were automatically created. Remember that it will take some time for data to populate into the GUI.

Congratulations on completing the integration of ThousandEyes and AppDynamics learning module! You have gained valuable insights into seamlessly combining network intelligence and application performance management for a comprehensive view of your digital ecosystem. By successfully setting up the integration, configuring recommended tests, and exploring test data within Views and Dashboards, you are now equipped to enhance user experiences, resolve issues proactively, and optimize your applications and networks effectively. Remember to leverage the skills and knowledge you’ve acquired here to drive continuous improvement and excellence in your digital operations. If you have any questions or need further assistance, our support team is here to help. Keep exploring and innovating to unlock the full potential of your integrated monitoring solution.

Learn More

• AppDynamics Integration: https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/integration-guides/appdynamics
• Justin Hauer on ThousandEyes and Kubernetes: https://github.com/justinhauer/Thousand-Eyes-kubernetes
• Global Vantage Points: https://docs.thousandeyes.com/product-documentation/global-vantage-points