APPDYNAMICS
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Updated on 17th Feb 2020
1. What is APM ?
Application performance management (APM) also known as Application Performance
Monitoring allowing monitoring tools for IT Support and Developers to monitor their
backend application architecture to resolve performance issues and bottlenecks in a
timely manner.
2. What is AppDynamics ?
The AppDynamics APM Platform enables you to monitor and manage your entire
application, to view, analyze the request/traffic through your network, backend
databases and application servers. AppDynamics APM gives you a single view across
your application landscape
3. What are the Languages worked on AppDynamics ?
AppDynamics works with popular programming languages such as Java, .NET, Node.js,
PHP, Python, C/C++
4. HOW APPDYNAMICS WORK?
▪ AppDynamics app agents need to connect to an AppDynamics Controller to retrieve
configuration data and send back information about the monitored environment
▪ This page provides general information about the connections between the agents
and Controller
▪ The connection between the agent and Controller is a ONE-WAY connection
initiated by the agent
5. What are AGENTS ?
▪ Agents are plug-ins or extensions that monitor the performance of your
application code, runtime, and behavior.
▪ The Controller receives metrics from Agents and sends them instructions. Once
deployed, Agents immediately monitor every line of code.
▪ This allows AppDynamics to trace every transaction from start to finish.
6. What is CONTROLLER?
The Controller helps Monitor, Troubleshoot and Analyze your entire application from
backend infrastructure to the end user—in one simple interface. Agents collect data
from a monitored environment and send it to the Controller. The Controller UI is where
you can view, understand, and analyze the data
7. What are the Port numbers for a Controller ?
▪ For a SaaS Controller, use 80 for HTTP or 443 for HTTPS
▪ For an on-premises Controller, use 8090 for HTTP or 8181 for HTTPS
8. What is the CPU Consumption for AppDynamics?
0% to 2% additional CPU consumption
9. What is the Heap Size (-Xmx) to accommodate the AppD Agent ?
Maximum heap size (-Xmx): 100 MB in addition to the amount required by the
application
10. What is the PermGen space to accommodate the AppD Agent ?
Maximum PermGen (permanent generation) heap size (-XX:MaxPermSize): 20 MB in
addition to the amount required by the application
11. What are the Dashboard Layouts available ?
a. GRID
b. ABSOLUTE
12. How the connection between Agent and Controller happens ?
The connection between the agent and Controller is a one-way connection initiated by
the agent..
13. What is a Business Transaction?
▪ A Business Transaction is made up of all the required services within your
environment that are called upon to fulfill and deliver a response to a user-
initiated request.
▪ These are typically things like login, search, checkout, etc
▪ A business transaction represents the data processing flow for a request, most
often a user request
▪ AppDynamics automatically discovers Business Transactions
14. What is the Default limit for Business Transaction in AppD?
▪ Business Application Limits: Each application is limited to 200 registered business
transactions.
▪ App Server Agent Limits: Each agent is limited to 50 registered business
transactions.
15. How will you configure Agents for SSL ?
Set these SSL-related properties:
▪ Set controller-ssl-enabled to true.
▪ Set the controller-port to the correct value for either on-premises or SaaS
Controller.
16. What is the important pre-requirement to install the Agent for an JVM ?
All files should be readable by the user under which the JVM runs. The user must have write
privileges to the conf and logs directories in the Java Agent home.
To achieve this is to install the agent as the same user that owns the JVM or as an
administrator on the host machine
17. What are the details seen in a simple CONTROLLER.INFO.XML file ?
The following shows a controller-info.xml file with sample configuration values:
18. How will you Verify Java Agent Installation?
“Started AppDynamics Java Agent Successfully” should be seen after installation in
agent log in <agent_home>/logs
.
19. What are the ACTIONS can be executed in Alert & Respond section ?
Actions are
Send an Email
Take Thread Dump
Create or Update a JIRA Ticket
Make an HTTP Request
Run a Script or Executable on problematic nodes
20. What are the Report Type options available for AppD?
a. Application Health
b. Custom Dashboard
c. Controller Audit
d. Home Screen
e. All Application Summary
21. What is a Transaction Snapshots?
A transaction snapshot gives you a cross-tier view of the processing flow for a single
invocation of a transaction.
22. What is Tier Response Time?
The total response time for the call as measured at the calling tier. This includes the
processing time on the called tier as well as on any tiers and backends it calls in turn.
23. What is Call Drill Downs?
A call drill down contains details for that business transaction execution on a particular
tier. It takes you to the code-level information for the transaction.
24. What is a Call Graph?
A call graph in a transaction snapshot shows you business transaction processing
information on a particular tier that participated on the business transaction. A call
graph lists the methods in a call stack and provides information about each call
25. How do you enable Server Visibility?
Enable <sim-enabled> to TRUE in controller-info.xml under Machine Agent folder
26. How will you enable .NET Compatibility Mode on the agent ?
Set the following options in <machine_agent_home>/conf/controller-info.xml:
<dotnet-compatibility-mode>true</dotnet-compatibility-mode>
27. What are the Two types of AppDynamics Browser Monitoring?
▪ Browser Real User Monitoring (Browser RUM)
▪ Browser Synthetic Monitoring
28. What is EUM in AppD ?
AppDynamics End User Monitoring (EUM) gives you visibility on the performance of
your application from the viewpoint of the end user.
29. What are the Parameters analyzed using EUM in AppD?
▪ What your slowest web/Ajax requests are, and where the problem may lie.
▪ What your slowest mobile and IoT network requests are, and where the problem
may lie.
▪ How application server performance impacts the performance of your web and
mobile traffic
▪ How performance varies by location, Client type, device, browser and browser
version, application and application version, operating system version, device
30. What are the Two files JavaScript Agent consists?
The JavaScript Agent consists of two files: adrum.js and adrum-ext.js.
31. What is Browser Synthetic Monitoring?
Browser Synthetic Monitoring uses geographically distributed Synthetic Agents to
continuously test key user workflows in your application. This allows you to monitor the
correctness and performance of multi-step flows independently of the user-generated
load.
32. What are the two ways of Synthetic Monitoring?
Two types are Scheduled Jobs & On-Demand Snapshots
KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER :
▪ App Agent captures Application related info like Load, Response time etc of the
Application
▪ Machine Agent captures Infrastructure details of the host like CPU, Memory etc
▪ The approximate bandwidth used by a single Java Agent with the default configuration
is five to eight kilobytes per second
▪ The maximum length of a tier name is 100 characters and the maximum length of a
node name is 225 characters for Linux and 500 characters for all other operating
systems
▪ Infrastructure Visibility is an add-on module to the Standalone Machine Agent and
requires a Server Visibility license on the agent.
▪ Network Visibility features are available for Linux and Windows.. Network Visibility is
enabled by default on AppDynamics controllers.
▪ The Analytics Agent collects data from AppDynamics App Agent (app server agent) and
log files, and sends it to the Events Service. The Analytics Agent is not enabled by default
▪ Automatic injection is available only for server-side applications built on Jasper-
supported JSP (Java), ASP.NET, or ASPX (.NET) frameworks. Thus, only the Java Agent
and .NET Agent support automatic injectioN
▪ You must allocate the same number of machine agents as your APM agents. For
example, if you allocate 10 Java agents, 10 .NET agents, and 10 Node.js agents, you must
allocate 30 Machine Agent units.
