appdynamics advanced bt configuration

AppDynamics Webinars:Advanced BT ConfigurationTodd Radel, Senior Manager – Customer Advocacy

Agenda

• Why is BT configuration important?• Creating custom BT rules and exclude rules• Using “BT lockdown” (new since 4.0)

• Using “BT discovery tool” (new since 4.1)

• Office hours

WHY IS BT CONFIGURATION IMPORTANT?

Why is it important to configure business transactions?

• Faster and easier to find the code causing problems if your BTs are organized nicely

• Metrics are computed per BT• Baselines are computed per BT• Health Rules alert on a particular BT

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Default BT discovery rules

• Where is “rent a movie”?

• Where is “pay for a movie”?

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Simple customizations

• Changing the default naming rules

• Deleting or excluding BT’s one at a time

• Renaming• Grouping

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Advanced customization

• Creating your own custom rules• Splitting BT’s by URL, parameter, or payload• Using exclude rules

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“The more effort you put into configuring Business Transactions, the more AppDynamics will help you.”

– Todd Radel, 2012

CREATING CUSTOM BT RULES

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Use cases

• Excluding all pages that match a certain pattern• Naming BT’s based on parameters or payload

– Part of the URL (by segment or regex)– GET or POST parameters– Cookies, session variables, header values– XML or JSON payload– Class name/method name

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Movieztream example

• Search form with several different search types:– By movie title– By category– By year released

• Each type follows a different code path

• How do I create separate BT’s for each search type?

USING BT LOCKDOWN

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What is “BT lockdown”?

• New feature added in 4.0 (Java and .NET)• Prevents new BT’s from being registered• New BT’s will go into “All Other Traffic” instead• Use the “View Traffic” button to select new BT’s and

promote them to the BT list• Keeps your BT list clean

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Catch-all rules

• Custom rule, priority 20, matches “/movie/search.htm”• Custom rule, priority 10, matches “/movie”• Custom rule, priority 0, matches “/”

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BT lockdown vs. “catch-all” rules

Registering new candidate BT’s Can be instantly promoted to BT list

Visibility Easy to see what has been excluded

Flexibility All-or-nothing approach

Result Clean BT list + “All Other Traffic”

Must create a higher-priority custom rule first

Need to inspect snapshots to find out what has been excluded

Can create “tiers” of catch-all rules with different levels of specificity

Clean BT list + “Catch-All Bucket”

BT lockdown Catch-all rules

USING THE BT DISCOVERY TOOL

What is the “BT discovery tool”?

• New feature added in 4.1 (Java only)• Interactive console to help discover and refine BT’s• Like a “sandbox”

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How it improves your workflow

The Old Way1. Create custom BT rules2. Generate load3. Look at discovered BT’s4. Stop load5. Delete discovered BT’s6. Adjust custom BT rules7. Repeat steps 2-7

The New Way1. Start discovery session2. Generate load3. Look at discovered BT’s4. Adjust custom BT rules5. Click “Apply”

FURTHER READING

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References

• Locking down Business Transactions• Using the Transaction Discovery Tool

• Custom BT naming rules:– Java Business Transaction Detection– Configure Business Transaction Detection for .NET

• Best Practices for Business Transactions

Thank You