AppDynamics
AppDynamics (a.k.a. AppD) is a cloud-enabling, full-stack application
performance monitoring (APM) solution. It is used in a multicloud world
to improve performance through visibility and detection of issues via realtime
monitoring. AppD provides end-to-end visibility of application
traffic, enabling developers and architects to deploy and manage solutions
with assurance. It also uses machine learning in executing automated rootcause
analysis. AppD agents in your environment discover and track
individual transactions with servers, databases, and other application
dependencies. The user experience is tracked and can be attributed to
specific code blocks, database calls, name resolution, or other
dependencies. The insight can be mapped to business metrics, providing
deep insight into impact and severity.
As a rich APM solution, AppD has an extensive API. We cover some of
the basics for authentication and basic information gathering, but a whole
book could be written about the depth of its API. The AppDynamic APIs
are documented at [Link]
appdynamics-apis.
The system provides for short-term, API-generated access tokens that
expire within five minutes by default or for longer-term, UI-generated
temporary access tokens that can be defined by the administrator for hour,
day, or year expirations. You can define your API clients by logging in to
your AppDynamics portal and accessing the gear icon in the upper-right
corner. From the drop-down navigation panel, select Administration. Then
on the left tab option, select API Clients. Next, click the Create (or +)
button and define your client name with an optional description. Click the
Generate Secret button and the copy gadget to the left of it. Make sure to
retain this client secret in a secure password manager. Furthermore, click
the Add (+) button under Roles and select the appropriate roles for the API
user. Finally, click Save in the upper-right corner. Figure 16-44 depicts the
steps just described.
Figure 16-44 Generating a Temporary Access Token in AppDynamics
Authentication with the longer-term, WebUI-generated client secret is
done as described in the next process.
A POST operation is created to the controller with the following
characteristics:
URL:
[Link]
ken
Header Content-Type: 'application/[Link]+protobuf;v=1'
Payload Data: x-www-form-urlencoded of
Click here to view code image
grant_type=client_credentials
client_id=<APIUserName>@<CustomerName>
client_secret=<ClientSecret>
An example curl utility equivalent would be
Click here to view code image
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/[Link].
cntrl+protobuf;v=1" "[Link]
api/oauth/access_token" -d 'grant_type=client_
credentials&client_id=<APIUserName>@<CustomerName>&client_
secret=<ClientSecure>'
The output results in the following:
Click here to view code image
appserver[centos]$ curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/
[Link]+protobuf;v=1" "[Link]
oauth/access_token" -d 'grant_type=client_credentials&client_
id=devcore@customer1&client_secret=fa42bc81-f3a8-4cbd-
9ac7-******'
{"access_token": "eyJraWQiOiIyY2Q3YjY0YS0zYTAzLTRiNzMtYmN
lMS02MjgwZTVmMzAyMTMiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.****M",
"expires_in": 300}
appserver[centos]$
A Postman utility equivalent is provided in Figure 16-45.
Figure 16-45 Using Postman to Generate AppDynamics Access Token
Additionally, this Python script would be a helpful baseline for
progressing to other API methods. You can set the following environment
variables to perform a more secure authentication method:
Click here to view code image
$ export APPD_CONTROLLER=[Link]:8090
$ export APPD_API_USER=devcore
$ export APPD_CUSTOMER=customer1
$ export APPD_CLIENT_SECRET=fa42bc81-f3a8-4cbd-9ac7-cf9766bcd93d
The full script is shown in Example 16-39.