This extension works only with the standalone machine agent. It has been tested against various URLs with different authentication mechanisms.
The URL monitoring extension gathers metrics and sends them to the AppDynamics Metric Browser.
- Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
- This extension uses Java 11 as some of the vulnerability fixes needed Java 11.
- Download and install Apache Maven which is configured with
Java 11to build the extension artifact from source. You can check the java version used in maven using commandmvn -vormvn --version. If your maven is using some other java version then please download java 11 for your platform and set JAVA_HOME parameter before starting maven.
- Clone the "url-monitoring-extension" repo using
git clone <repoUrl>command. - To build from source, clone this repository and run 'mvn clean install'. This will produce a UrlMonitor-VERSION.zip in the target directory.
- Unzip URLMonitor-VERSION.zip and copy the 'UrlMonitor' directory to
<MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/ - Configure the extension by referring to the Configuration section.
- Restart the Machine Agent.
Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.
Every AppDynamics extension has a monitor.xml file that configures the extension. In this case, the monitor.xml
for this extension just has a single option: the path where the extension can find the main config.yml file.
Note that the path is relative to $AGENT_HOME.
<task-arguments>
<argument name="config-file" is-required="true" default-value="monitors/UrlMonitor/config.yml" />
</task-arguments>The main configuration for this extension then lives in a file called config.yaml. It uses a simple syntax that anyone can edit with a simple text editor.
Note: Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. You may want to validate the yaml file using a yaml validator.
Here's a sample:
# Client level configurations, common across all sites to be monitored
clientConfig:
maxConnTotal: 1000
maxConnPerRoute: 1000
maxRedirects: 10
ignoreSslErrors: true
userAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AppDynamics UrlMonitor; http://www.appdynamics.com/)
defaultParams:
method: GET
socketTimeout: 30000
connectTimeout: 30000
numAttempts: 1
#Sites that need to be monitored
sites:
#No authentication, with a pattern to match
- name: Google
url: http://www.google.com
followRedirects: false
groupName: MySites
# Patterns to be matched, multiple patterns(to be matched) can be configured for a given site
matchPatterns:
- name: LuckyButton
type: caseInsensitiveSubstring
pattern: Google
- name: AppDynamics
url: http://www.appdynamics.com
authType: BASIC
- name: File Download
url: https://github.com/Appdynamics/url-monitoring-extension/releases/download/1.0.6/UrlMonitor.zip
# Basic Authentication with password encryption
- name: My Controller
url: https://mycontroller.saas.appdynamics.com/controller/rest/applications
username: demouser@customer1
password: welcome
encryptedPassword: "IGVtC9eudmgG8RDjmRjGPQ=="
encryptionKey:
authType: BASIC
#NTLM Auth Sample Configuration
- name: My Controller
url: http://localhost:8090/controller
username: user@DOMAIN
password: password
authType: NTLM
connectTimeout: 60000
# Client Cert Auth Sample Configuration
- name: LocalHost
url: https://localhost:8443
password: password
authType: SSL
keyStoreType: SUNX509
keyStorePath: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_121.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/client.jks
keyStorePassword: password
trustStorePath: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_121.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/client.jks
trustStorePassword: password
#POST request sample configuration
- name: My POST site
url: http://localhost:8293/api/v1/metrics
username:
password:
connectTimeout: 60000
method: POST
headers:
Content-Type: application/json
requestPayloadFile: src/test/resources/conf/postrequestPayloadFile.json
matchPatterns:
- name: Error
type: substring
pattern: Error 400
#Proxy Configuration
- name: Google
url: http://www.google.com
groupName: MySites
proxyConfig:
host: ""
port: ""
username: ""
password: ""
#prefix used to show up metrics in AppDynamics. This will create it in specific Tier. Replace
metricPrefix: Server|Component:<TierID>|Custom Metrics|URLMonitor|
#This will create this metric in all the tiers, under this path
#metricPrefix: Custom Metrics|URLMonitor|Increase the timeout threshold for a site that is often slow:
- name: My Slow Site
url: http://www.wordpress.com
connectTimeout: 60000
Supply a username and password for HTTP Basic authentication:
- name: My Login Page
url: http://localhost:8090/controller/rest/applications
authtype: BASIC
username: demouser@customer1
password: welcome
Retrieve the Google home page and make sure the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is visible:
- name: Google
url: http://www.google.com
matchPatterns:
- name: LuckyButton
type: substring
pattern: I'm Feeling Lucky
Retrieve the Google home page and count how many times the word "Mail" appears:
- name: Google
url: http://www.google.com
matchPatterns:
- name: MailCount
type: word
pattern: Mail
POST xml or json payload to any url and search for the patterns in the response
- name: My POST site
url: http://myposturl
method: POST
headers:
Content-Type: application/json
requestPayloadFile: path/to/postrequestPayloadFile.json
matchPatterns:
- name: Error
type: substring
pattern: Error 400
The clientConfig section sets options for the HTTP client library, including:
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| maxConnTotal | 1000 | No | Maximum number of simultaneous HTTP connections |
| maxConnPerRoute | 1000 | No | Maximum number of simultaneous HTTP connections to a single host |
| threadCount | 10 | No | Maximum number of Threads spawned to cater HTTP request |
| ignoreSSlErrors | false | No | Whether to ignore errors in SSL certificate validation or host validation |
| userAgent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AppDynamics UrlMonitor; http://www.appdynamics.com/) | No | Custom User-Agent header to send with requests (can be used to mimic desktop or mobile browsers) |
| maxRedirects | 10 | No | Maximum redirects |
The defaultParams section sets the default options for all sites. These options can then be overriden at the individual site level.
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| method | GET | No | HTTP method to use (e.g. GET, POST, HEAD, OPTIONS, etc.). The default is "HEAD", which avoids the overhead of retrieving the entire body of the response, but which prevents the agent from doing pattern matching or reporting the response size. Make sure you set the method to GET if you want these features. |
| socketTimeout | 30000 | No | Maximum time to wait for a socket connection to open, in milliseconds |
| connectTimeout | 30000 | No | Maximum time to wait for the HTTP handshake, in milliseconds |
| numAttempts | 1 | No | Number of times the site will be retrieved. The metrics then reported will be an average over all attempts. |
| treatAuthFailedAsError | true | No | If false, the extension will report the site status as "SUCCESS" even if authentication fails. |
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| name | none | Yes | Name of the url with which metric folder that will be created in Metric Browser |
| url | none | Yes | The url to monitor |
| followRedirects | true | No | Whether the site should follow Redirect responses |
| groupName | none | No | The group under which site needs to be categorised |
| authType | none | No | type of authentication, supported auth are Basic, NTLM, Client Cert |
| matchPatterns | none | No | Matches the specified patterns in the URL response , and reports the total number of matches count as metric |
| proxyConfig | null | No | Specify the host and port of the proxy. |
| headers | none | No | Component of request header section, e.g.: Content-Type. |
| requestPayloadFile | none | No | Payload file(XML or JSON) to upload to URL. |
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| host | none | Yes(if proxy config specified) | proxy host |
| port | none | Yes(if proxy config specified) | proxy port |
| username | none | Yes(if proxy config specified) | proxy username |
| password | none | Yes(if proxy config specified) | proxy password |
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| authType | NONE | Yes(if authType is specified) | Name of the authentication type: BASIC, NTLM, ClientCert |
| username | null | Yes(if authType is specified) | username |
| password | null | Yes(if authType is specified) | password |
| encryptedPassword | none | no | encrypted password if using password ecryption |
| encryptionKey | none | no | the key used to encrypt the password |
| keyStoreType | none | no | keyStoreType, used only in Client Cert Auth |
| keyStorePath | none | no | path to keyStore file, used only in Client Cert Auth |
| keyStorePassword | none | no | keyStorePassword, used only in Client Cert Auth |
| trustStorePath | none | no | path to trustStore file, used only in Client Cert Auth |
| trustStorePassword | none | no | trustStorePassword, used only in Client Cert Auth |
| usePreemptiveAuth | false | no | true if preemptive authentication is required |
| Option Name | Default Value | Mandatory | Option Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| name | none | Yes(if MatchPattern specified) | Name of the metric folder that will be created in Metric Browser |
| pattern | none | Yes(if MatchPattern specified) | The string to search for |
| type | substring | Yes(if MatchPattern specified) | Can be one of: substring, caseInsensitiveSubstring, regex, or word (see below) |
The options for the pattern type are:
| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| substring | Exact match on the given string |
| caseInsensitiveSubstring | Case-insensitive match on the given string |
| regex | Regular expression match |
| word | Case-insensitive, but must be surrounded by non-word characters |
Metrics for match pattern appears under the following path:
Site->Pattern Matches -> Name of MatchPattern(As specified in config.yml) -> Count
In the AppDynamics Metric Browser, URL Monitor's metrics can be seen at: Application Infrastructure Performance | Tier-ID | Custom Metrics | URL Monitor
Following metrics are reported for each site:
- Average Response time (ms) -> The time after the request is sent until the first byte is received back.
- First Byte Time (ms) -> Time taken from the time the request build has started to receive the first response byte.
- Download Time (ms) -> Total time taken to receive the entire response from the URL.
- Response Bytes -> It represents the length of the response returned from the URL.
- Response Code -> It represents the HTTP status code returned from the URL.
- Status -> It represents whether the URL is FAILED(2), ERROR(3) or SUCCESS(4). Possible values are: UNKNOWN(0), FAILED(2), ERROR(3), SUCCESS(4)
- Responsive Count(Available at GroupName Level) -> Number of sites in a given group, that responded successfully.
Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.
Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench
Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.
Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.
| Name | Version |
|---|---|
| Extension Version | 2.2.1 |
| Last Update | 08/27/2024 |
| Change List | ChangeLog |
Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.