500-430 Practice Questions

Before installing an AppDynamics Controller on Linux, you need to perform some preparatory tasks

to ensure the system meets the requirements and the installation runs smoothly. Two of these tasks

are:

Install libaio on the host machine if it does not already have it installed. This library facilitates

asynchronous I/O operations on the system, which are required by the Controller. You can use the

package manager of your Linux distribution to install libaio, such as yum or apt-get. For example, on

CentOS, you can run yum install libaio1.

Verify that you have enough temporary (tmp) space available on the system, at least 1 GB. The

Controller installation uses the tmp space to extract and install the software components. You can

check the tmp space by running df -h /tmp2. If the tmp space is insufficient, you can either free up

some space by deleting unnecessary files, or specify a different temporary directory for the

installation by passing the -Djava.io.tmpdir parameter to the installer3.

Other preparatory tasks include verifying the user account permissions, configuring the virus

scanners,

installing

the

netstat

network

utility,

and

setting

the

file

descriptor

limit2. Reference: Prepare Linux for the Controller, Install the Controller on Linux, and [Controller

System Requirements] in the AppDynamics documentation.

AppDynamics can collect sensitive data such as credit card numbers from various sources, such as

SQL queries, error messages, HTTP headers, cookies, and so on. To protect this data from

unauthorized access or exposure, an administrator should configure the user permissions for the

following features:

SQL Bind Variables: This feature enables the agents to capture the values of the parameters that are

passed to SQL queries. These values can contain sensitive data such as credit card numbers,

passwords, or personal information. To prevent this data from being stored or displayed in the

Controller UI, the administrator should disable the Capture SQL Bind Values permission for the users

who do not need to see this data. Alternatively, the administrator can enable the Mask SQL Bind

Values permission, which replaces the values with asterisks (*) in the UI. The administrator can also

configure the agent properties to exclude or mask certain bind variables based on patterns or

keywords1.

Diagnostic Data Collectors: This feature enables the agents to collect additional data from the

application code, such as method arguments, return values, HTTP headers, cookies, and so on. These

data can also contain sensitive information that should not be exposed to unauthorized users. To

control the access to this data, the administrator should disable the View Diagnostic Data Collectors

permission for the users who do not need to see this data. The administrator can also configure the

agent properties to exclude or mask certain data collectors based on patterns or keywords2.

Other features that can collect sensitive data and require user permissions are Error Detection,

Memory Monitoring, and Policies. However, these features are less likely to capture credit card

numbers than SQL Bind Variables and Diagnostic Data Collectors. Therefore, the best answer is

option C and E. Reference: Sensitive Data Collection and Security, SQL Bind Variables, and Diagnostic

Data Collectors in the AppDynamics documentation.

The AppDynamics standalone Machine Agent is a Java program that runs on a host machine and

collects hardware and infrastructure metrics, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. The

Machine Agent can also perform additional functions, such as:

Acting as a forwarder for analytics events: The Machine Agent can be configured to forward business

transaction, log, browser, mobile, and synthetic events from the application agents to the

AppDynamics Events Service, which is a distributed, scalable data store for analytics data. The

Machine Agent can also forward custom events from the SDK or API to the Events Service. This

allows you to use the AppDynamics Analytics features, such as dashboards, queries, funnels, and

metrics, to analyze the performance and behavior of your applications and users12.

Starting an HTTP listener for custom metrics: The Machine Agent can be configured to start an HTTP

listener that can receive custom metrics from external sources, such as scripts, tools, or other

applications. The Machine Agent can then report these custom metrics to the AppDynamics

Controller, where you can view them in the Metric Browser or use them in health rules, policies, or

dashboards. This allows you to monitor any aspect of your system that is not covered by the default

Machine Agent metrics34.

The other statements are false because:

B) The Machine Agent cannot send SNMP alerts. The Machine Agent can only receive SNMP traps

from external sources and report them as events to the AppDynamics Controller. The AppDynamics

Controller can send SNMP alerts to external systems based on health rule violations or events, but

this is not a function of the Machine Agent5 .

C) The Machine Agent cannot communicate with multiple AppDynamics Controllers. The Machine

Agent can only communicate with one Controller at a time, which is specified in the controller-

info.xml file in the agent configuration directory. If you want to monitor the same host machine with

multiple Controllers, you need to install multiple Machine Agents on the same machine, each with a

different Controller configuration and port number .

D) The Machine Agent cannot restart itself if it goes down. The Machine Agent does not have a built-

in mechanism to automatically restart itself in case of a failure or a crash. You need to use an external

tool or script to monitor the Machine Agent process and restart it if necessary. Alternatively, you can

use the AppDynamics Agent Installer to deploy the Machine Agent as a service, which can be

configured to restart automatically on failure .

Reference: Analytics Agent, Analytics Data, HTTP Listener, Custom Metrics, SNMP Trap Alerting

Integration, [SNMP Integration], [Machine Agent Configuration Properties], [Install the Machine

Agent], [Agent Installer], [Start and Stop the Machine Agent]

To set up AppDynamics Controllers as a high availability pair, you need to meet the following

requirements1:

Passwordless SSH must be configured between the two Controller servers. This allows the Enterprise

Console to automate the configuration and administration tasks associated with a highly available

deployment on Linux systems.

Both servers must have the Controller software installed prior to setting up high availability. The

Controllers in an HA pair must be equivalent versions, and be in the same data center.

Both servers must have identical directory structures for the Controller installation. The individual

machines

in

the

Controller

HA

pair

need

to

have

an

equivalent

amount

of

disk

space. Reference: Prerequisites for High Availability

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (CAPI) documents, the minimum

recommended number of nodes for a redundant Events Service is three ©. The Events Service is a

distributed database that stores and processes the analytics data collected by the AppDynamics

platform. The Events Service cluster consists of multiple nodes that share the data load and provide

fault tolerance and high availability. The minimum number of nodes for a functional Events Service

cluster is one, but this is not recommended for production environments, as it does not provide any

redundancy or resilience. The minimum number of nodes for a redundant Events Service cluster is

three, as this allows the cluster to tolerate the failure of one node without losing any data or

availability. The recommended number of nodes for a redundant Events Service cluster is five or

more, as this provides better performance and scalability12.

The incorrect options are:

1 (A): This is not a valid option because a single-node Events Service cluster does not provide any

redundancy or resilience. If the node fails, the cluster becomes unavailable and the data is lost. A

single-node Events Service cluster is only suitable for testing or development purposes, not for

production environments12.

2 (B): This is not a valid option because a two-node Events Service cluster does not provide sufficient

redundancy or resilience. If one node fails, the cluster becomes unstable and may lose data or

availability. A two-node Events Service cluster is not recommended for production environments12.

4 (D): This is not a valid option because a four-node Events Service cluster is not optimal for

redundancy or resilience. A four-node Events Service cluster has an even number of nodes, which

may cause a split-brain scenario, where the cluster is divided into two equal partitions that cannot

communicate with each other. This may result in data inconsistency or unavailability. A four-node

Events Service cluster can be improved by adding a fifth node to avoid the split-brain scenario12.

Reference:

1: Events Service Deployment - AppDynamics

2: Events Service Requirements - AppDynamics

The AppDynamics Rest API to retrieve business transactions allows you to get a list of all business

transactions in a business application, along with their key metrics and properties1. The correct URL

format for this API is1:

http(s)

://:/controller/rest/applications//business-

transactions

The other options are incorrect because12:

Option A uses an invalid endpoint /allbts, which does not exist in the API.

Option C uses an incorrect base URL /controller/applications, which is used for the Controller UI, not

the Rest API.

Option D uses a misspelled endpoint /allbis, which does not exist in the API. Reference: Retrieve All

Business Transactions in a Business Application, AppDynamics APIs

The Health Rule REST API allows you to create, configure, update, and delete health rules for

multiple applications simultaneously. To use this API, you need to specify the application in the URL

string. You can use either the application ID or the application name for this purpose. The application

ID is a unique numeric identifier for each application in the Controller. The application name is the

display name of the application in the AppDynamics UI. You cannot use the application alias, GUID,

or REGEX for the Health Rule REST API. Reference: Health Rule API and Retrieve All Business

Applications in the AppDynamics documentation.

The EUM agent is a special agent that runs in web, mobile, or IoT applications and collects metrics on

the end user experience. The EUM agent communicates with the EUM Collector, which is a

component that verifies, aggregates, and packages the raw metrics sent by the EUM agent12. The

EUM Collector can be either a SaaS service provided by AppDynamics or an on-premises server

installed by the customer12. The EUM Collector then sends the processed metrics to the

AppDynamics

Controller

and

the

Events

Service

for

storage,

analysis,

and

visualization12. Reference: Overview of End User Monitoring, EUM Data

The directory contains the EUM Server installation files, configuration files, and data files. It is recommended to back up this directory as a precaution before upgrading or migrating the EUM Server. The default location of this directory is /AppDynamics/EUM, where is the directory where you installed the Controller. You can also use the backup-eum.sh script to back up the EUM Server data12. Reference: Upgrade the Production EUM Server, Configure the EUM Server

To upgrade an EUM Server that is currently in production, the administrator should follow these

steps:

Stop the EUM Server before the upgrade. This ensures that the EUM Server does not process any

incoming data from the EUM agents during the upgrade process. The administrator can use

the eum.sh or eum.bat script to stop the EUM Server gracefully1.

Run the new installer on the EUM host machine. The installer will detect the existing EUM Server

installation and prompt the administrator to upgrade it to the latest version. The installer will also

migrate the EUM data from the old version to the new version, if needed. The administrator should

follow the instructions on the installer wizard to complete the upgrade2.

The other options are not necessary or correct for upgrading the EUM Server. The administrator does

not need to stop or upgrade the EUM agents, as they are compatible with the new version of the

EUM Server. The administrator does not need to update the EUM Server access key, as it remains the

same after the upgrade. The administrator does not need to install MySQL, as it is bundled with the

EUM Server installation package2. Reference: Upgrade the Production EUM Server and Start and

Stop the EUM Server in the AppDynamics documentation.