Tough Questions: AppDynamics

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions are based off of individual experiences and are not reflective of anyone or anything other than myself.  The information stated below is has either been obtained from personal engagements or available via other publications.

AppDynamics was founded in 2008 and had the first version launch in 2010.  Since launch they have made a ton of noise and have created a pretty impressive list of customers.  AppDynamics is enterprise focused but can do deployments ranging from start-ups to large dotCOMS.  The two main founders started AppDynamics after leaving CA Introscope so they have been really in this space for over a few decades.  Their main target audience appears to be production operations teams and heavily focus efforts on getting C-level conversation for enterprise wide type of deployments.

The platform is comprised of APM, Mobile Real-User Monitoring, Browser Real-User Monitoring, Database Monitoring, Server Monitoring, and Application Analytics.  There is a lot of buzz around a new Hadoop based architecture the platform is moving to, but I am going to rate the company as is today.

How do you correlate different data points?

Whoa, deja vu!  Same thing as before.  Make sure they explain how the are able to show when a user clicks on a button or link, how the back end requests are tied together.  Fact of the matter is, APM and touch-point based capture (browser/mobile) are two separate components relying on separate hardware.  This is also true for their back end correlation as well. You will not get end to end capture for a majority (like 99.9% in high traffic environments).

How many agents do I need to install?

This is sort of like part two of the question above.  AppDynamics requires a separate process to grab host metrics.  Not the end of the world.  More an annoyance when it comes to upgrading and managing a complex environment.

How do you monitor mobile/web server/mainframe?

This is the one they should seriously be called out on every single time.  Their "agents" for these components are not agents.  AppDynamics subscribes to counters or relies on other vendor integrations to get at this data.  If you want counters; write a script, do not pay for that type of stuff.

How do you scale?

Be careful asking this question.  AppDynamics could quote that they have 10,000 plus agent deployments.  Remember that additional agent they need for host metrics?  Want to guess what make up those ridiculously sounding agents to controllers environments?  If they claim they have X-thousand agents reporting to a single controller server, demand to talk to a customer that currently has that deployed.  They often name-drop companies they are no longer at as well, or at least not in the previous scale they like to mention (AHEM... NETFLIX).

Final Rant

Some of the items they are working on are also very questionable.  The whole DevOps movement at its core is to facilitate communication across all teams involved in the SDLC.  They are taking that too seriously with the "Virtual War Room".  APM is not meant to "make a better war room".  APM at ITS core is meant to "Virtually Eliminate The War Room" (TO: Marketing, From: Bill (You're Welcome)).  Cool, you made WebEx version 1.0.  Congratulations.  But, this really will not ultimately lead to helping solve harder problems.  It is a better way to communicate yes, but it is not a core fundamental of diagnosing performance problems.


Back to intro
Continue to New Relic
Continue to Dynatrace