AppDynamics Operator

AppDynamics Operator simplifies the configuration and lifecycle management of the AppDynamics ClusterAgent and the AppDynamics Machine Agent on different Kubernetes distributions and OpenShift. The Operator encapsulates key operational knowledge on how to configure and upgrade the ClusterAgent and the Machine Agent. It knows, for example, which configuration changes are benign and do not require restart of the ClusterAgent, which minimizes unnecesary load on the cluster API server.

The Operator is implemented using OperatorSDK and uses Kubernetes API to maintain the desired state of the custom resources that represent the ClusterAgent and the Machine Agent. When the Operator is deployed, it creates custom resource definitions (CRDs) for 2 custom resources:

• clusteragent, which represents the ClusterAgent.
• infraviz, which represents the Machine Agent bundled with netviz and analytics.

This level of abstraction further simplifies the management of monitoring and imstrumentation and ensures granular security policy of the ClusterAgent and the Machine Agent.

Operator deployment

Create namespace for the operator and the ClusterAgent

• Create namespace for AppDynamics components

  • Kubernetes kubectl create namespace appdynamics
  • OpenShift oc new-project appdynamics --description="AppDynamics Infrastructure"

• Create Secret cluster-agent-secret with the following key

  • The "controller-key" - the access key to the AppDynamics controller.

kubectl -n appdynamics create secret generic cluster-agent-secret \
--from-literal=controller-key="<controller-access-key>" \

• Update the image reference in the Operator deployment spec (deploy/cluster-agent-operator.yaml), if necessary.

The default is "docker.io/appdynamics/cluster-agent-operator:latest".

• Deploy the Operator

kubectl create -f deploy/cluster-agent-operator.yaml

• On OpenShift

oc create -f deploy/cluster-agent-operator-openshift.yaml

Images

By default "docker.io/appdynamics/cluster-agent-operator:latest" is used.

AppDynamics images are also available from Red Hat Container Catalog.

To enable pulling, create a secret in the ClusterAgent namespace. In this example, namespace appdynamics is used and appdynamics-operator account is linked to the secret.

$ oc -n appdynamics create secret docker-registry redhat-connect 
--docker-server=registry.connect.redhat.com 
--docker-username=REDHAT_CONNECT_USERNAME 
--docker-password=REDHAT_CONNECT_PASSWORD --docker-email=unused
$ oc -n appdynamics secrets link appdynamics-operator redhat-connect 
--for=pull 

ClusterAgent deployment

The AppDynamics Cluster Agent is a new, lightweight agent written in Golang providing APM monitoring for Kubernetes. The Cluster Agent is designed to help you understand how Kubernetes infrastructure affects your applications and business performance. With the AppDynamics Cluster Agent, you can collect metadata, metrics, and events about a Kubernetes cluster. You can query for the components in the cluster, and report metrics for those components. The Cluster Agent works across cloud platforms such as Kubernetes on AWS EKS, AKS on Azure, PKS on Pivotal and many others. The clusteragent is the custom resource that the Operator works with to deploy an instance of the ClusterAgent. When a clusteragent spec is provided, the Operator will create a single replica deployment and the necessary additional resources (a configMap and a service) to support the ClusterAgent.

Here is an example of a minimalistic spec of the ClusterAgent custom resource:

apiVersion: appdynamics.com/v1alpha1
kind: Clusteragent
metadata:
  name: k8s-cluster-agent
  namespace: appdynamics
spec:
  controllerUrl: "https://saas.appdynamics.com"
  account: "customer1"
  appName: "Cluster1"

Clusteragent Configuration Settings

Parameter	Description	Default
controllerUrl	Url of the AppDynamics controller	Required
account	AppDynamics Account Name	Required
image	Cluster Agent image reference	During the Beta period access to the image must be requested from AppDynamics
resources	Definitions of resources and limits for the machine agent	See resource recommendations below
appName	Name of the cluster	Required
metricsSyncInterval	Sampling interval at which metrics should be collected periodically	Default 30 sec
logLevel	Logging level (INFO, DEBUG, WARN, TRACE)	Default INFO
logFileSizeMb	The maximum file size of the log in MB.	Default is 5
logFileBackups	The maximum number of backups the log saves. When the maximum number of backups is reached, the 3 oldest log file after the initial log file is deleted.	Default is 3

Example resource limits:

   resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 300m
      memory: "200M"
    requests: 
      cpu: 200m
      memory: "100M"

The Machine Agent deployment

Appdynamics operator can be used to enable server and network visibility with AppDynamics Machine agent. The operator works with custom resource infraviz to deploy the AppDynamics Machine Agent daemon set.

Here is an example of a minimalistic infraviz spec with the required parameters:

apiVersion: appdynamics.com/v1alpha1
kind: InfraViz
metadata:
  name: appd-infraviz
  namespace: appdynamics
spec:
  controllerUrl: "https://appd-controller.com"
  image: "docker.io/appdynamics/machine-agent-analytics:latest"
  account: "<your-account-name>"
  globalAccount: "<your-global-account-name"
 

The controller URL must be in the following format: <protocol>://<controller-domain>:<port>

Infraviz Configuration Settings

Parameter	Description	Default
controllerUrl	Url of the AppDynamics controller	Required
account	AppDynamics Account Name	Required
globalAccount	Global Account Name	Required
eventServiceUrl	Event Service Endpoint	Optional
enableContainerHostId	Flag that determines how container names are derived (pod name vs container id)	"true"
enableServerViz	Enable Server Visibility	"true"
enableDockerViz	Enable Docker Container Visibiltiy	"true"
uniqieHostId	Unique host ID in AppDynamics.	Optional
metricsLimit	Number of metrics that the Machine Agent is allowed to post to the controller	Optional
logLevel	Logging level (info or debug)	info
stdoutLogging	Determines if the logs are saved to a file or redirected to the console	"false"
netVizPort	When > 0, the network visibility agent will be deployed in a sidecar along with the machine agent. By default the network visibility agent works with port 3892	Not set by default
proxyUrl	Url of the proxy server (protocol://domain:port")	Optional
proxyUser	Proxy user credentials (user@password)	Optional
propertyBag	A string with any other machine agent parameters	Optional
pks	PKS deployment flag. Must be used on PKS environments	Optional
enableMasters	When set to true server visibility will be provided for Master nodes. By default only Worker nodes are monitored. On managed Kubernetes providers the flag has no effect, as the Master plane is not accessible	Optional
image	The Machine Agent image	"appdynamics/machine-agent-analytics:latest"
nodeSelector	A set of nodes to deploy the daemon set pods to	Optional
tolerations	A list of tolerations	Optional
env	List of environment variables	Optional
args	List of command arguments	Optional
resources	Definitions of resources and limits for the machine agent	See example below

Example resource limits:

   resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 600m
      memory: "1G"
    requests: 
      cpu: 300m
      memory: "800M"