Cisco 500-430 Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer Exam Practice Test

The AppDynamics Rest API allows you to retrieve information and perform operations on the AppDynamics platform using HTTP requests. To retrieve all AppDynamics business applications from an AppDynamics Controller using the AppDynamics Rest API, you need to use the following URL format:

http(s)://:/controller/rest/applications

This URL returns the business application names and internal numeric identifiers for all the applications that are monitored by the Controller. You can use the application name or ID as a parameter for other API methods that require the application context. You can also specify the output format as XML (default) or JSON by adding the output query parameter. For example:

http(s)://:/controller/rest/applications?output=JSON

This URL returns the same information as the previous one, but in JSON format. You can also filter the applications by their status (alive or not) by adding the time-range-type query parameter. For example:

http(s)://:/controller/rest/applications?time-range-type=BEFORE_NOW&duration-in-mins=60

This URL returns only the applications that are alive in the last 60 minutes. An alive application is an application with at least one node that submits at least one metric to the Controller in the provided time range12. References: Application Model API, Metric and Snapshot API

The EUM Server is the on-premises version of the EUM Cloud that receives, processes, and stores data from EUM agents. For production installation, AppDynamics recommends that the EUM Server and the Controller sit on different hosts, and the EUM Server hosts its own MySQL instance. This improves the scalability and performance of both components. Moreover, AppDynamics strongly recommends that SSL traffic from agents to the EUM Server is terminated at a reverse proxy that sits in front of the EUM Server in the network path, and forwards connections to the EUM Server using HTTP. This relieves the SSL processing load from the EUM Server, simplifies the certificate management, and enhances the security by isolating the EUM Server from the external Internet. Therefore, the best implementation mode for deploying an EUM Server with reverse proxy in a production environment is option D. References: EUM Server Deployment, Install a Production EUMServer, Reverse Proxy configuration for EUM, and Browser EUM installation in the AppDynamics documentation and community.

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. References: Health Rule API and Retrieve All Business Applications in the AppDynamics documentation.

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Professional Implementer (CAPI) documents, when updating the Database Agent, you need to follow these steps12:

• Stop the agent as described for your specific installation in Start and Stop the Database Agent.
• Make a copy of the existing agent directory, . Backing up allows you to revert to the previous agent installation if you need to. You can also copy over the controller-info.xml configuration file to the new installation to ensure the agent configuration is maintained.
• Install the Database Agent as described for your specific installation in Administer the Database Agent.
• Copy the \conf\controller-info.xml file to the new installation directory, \conf. To ensure the agent configuration is maintained, copy the \conf\controller-info.xml file to the new installation directory, \conf.
• Start the new agent. See Start and Stop the Database Agent.
• Verify the Database Agent Installation. See Verify the Database Agent Installation.

Therefore, the correct statements are:

• The Database Agent must be stopped and restarted during the upgrade. (A)
• Controller-info.xml is the only file that needs to be migrated from the previous agent to the new agent. (D)

The incorrect statements are:

• If the agent is moved to a new location during the upgrade, the AppDynamics Controller must be reconfigured to reference the new location of the agent. (B) This is not true because the controller-info.xml file contains the information about the Controller host, port, account name, access key, and SSL settings. As long as this file is copied to the new agent location, the Controller does not need to be reconfigured.
• All data collectors created from the previous agent must be migrated to the new agent. © This is not true because the data collectors are configured on the Controller UI, not on the agent. The agent collects the metrics from the databases and sends them to the Controller. The data collectors do not need to be migrated to the new agent.
• After the Database Agent is upgraded, the AppDynamics Controller must be restarted. (E) This is not true because the Controller does not depend on the agent version. The agent and the Controller are compatible as long as they meet the Agent and Controller Compatibility requirements.

References:

• 1: Upgrade the Database Agent - AppDynamics
• 2: Release Upgrade Checklist for Database Agents - AppDynamics

The REST query that could be used to verify the availability of an AppDynamics Controller is1:

• http://:/controller/rest/ping

This query returns a simple text response of “pong” if the Controller is up and running, or an error message if the Controller is down or unreachable1. This query does not require any authentication or parameters, and can be used as a quick and easy way to check the Controller status1. References: Ping the Controller

AppDynamics recommends that you terminate SSL connections from agents at a reverse proxy or a load balancer in front of the Controller, rather than at the Controller itself. This improves the performance and scalability of the Controller by offloading the SSL processing to the proxy or load balancer. It also simplifies the configuration and management of SSL certificates and truststores. To enable this option, you need to configure the proxy or load balancer to accept SSL connections from agents and forward them to the Controller using HTTP. You also need to configure the agents to use SSL and point to the proxy or load balancer host and port. See Enable SSL for the Java Agent for an example. References: Agent-to-Controller Connections and Enable SSL and SSH for Database Agent Communications in the AppDynamics documentation.

The AppDynamics Controller is instrumented by an internal, out-of-the-box, AppDynamics Java agent that monitors the performance and health of the Controller itself1. To access the information provided by the internal agent, you need to log in to the Controller UI with the following credentials2:

• Account = system
• Username = root
• Password =

The system account is a special account that is used only for internal monitoring and troubleshooting purposes. It is not visible in the normal Controller UI and requires a special URL to access it2. The root user is the default administrator user for the system account and has the same password as the admin user for the customer1 account3. References: Controller Self-Monitoring, Monitoring a Controller Using the Internal Monitoring Agent, Controller Accounts

The default configuration of the Mobile SDK enables crash reports and network requests12. Crash reports capture and report any unhandled exceptions or signals that cause the app to terminate abnormally1. Network requests monitor the performance and errors of HTTP and HTTPS requests made by the app2. These features are enabled by default and do not require any additional code or configuration to work12. References: Crash Reports, Network Requests

The AppDynamics Controller properties that govern how long metric data is retained in the database are1:

• metrics.ten.min.retention.period: This property specifies the number of days to retain metric data at 10-minute granularity. The default value is 32 days.
• metrics.retention.period: This property specifies the number of days to retain metric data at 1-hour granularity. The default value is 365 days.
• metrics.min.retention.period: This property specifies the number of hours to retain metric data at 1-minute granularity. The default value is 4 hours.

The other options are incorrect because1:

• metrics.ten.sec.retention.period: This property does not exist in the AppDynamics Controller. The finest granularity for metric data is 1 minute.
• metrics.day.retention.period: This property does not exist in the AppDynamics Controller. The coarsest granularity for metric data is 1 hour.
• metrics.week.retention.period: This property does not exist in the AppDynamics Controller. The metric data retention is based on days, not weeks. References: Database Size and Data Retention

The AppDynamics Controller is a Java web application that runs on a GlassFish application server and uses a MySQL database. During the installation of the Controller, two user accounts are created by default:

• The GlassFish asadmin user is the administrative user for the GlassFish server. This user has the authority to start, stop, and configure the GlassFish server and its domains. The default username for this user is admin and the default password is appdynamics. You can change the password for this user after the installation by using the asadmin command-line tool1.
• The customer-specified Controller administrator account is the user account that you provide during the installation wizard. This is the account that you use to access the AppDynamics User Interface (UI) for the first time and perform various tasks such as creating applications, configuring agents, managing users and groups, and so on. You can choose any username and password for this account, but AppDynamics recommends using only ASCII characters. You can also create additional user accounts in the Controller UI after the installation2.

The other options are not user accounts that are created by the Controller installation. The Elastic search root user, the REST API user, and the MySQL appd admin user are user accounts that are used internally by the Controller components and are not exposed to the end user. The OS user that will run the controller is a user account that you need to create on the host machine before the installation, and it is not created by the Controller installation3. References: Controller Installation, Manage Users and Groups, and Update the Root User and Glassfish Admin Passwords in the AppDynamics documentation.

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. References: Upgrade the Production EUM Server, Configure the EUM Server

The AppDynamics Controller Admin Console lets you configure certain global settings for the Controller, such as metric retention periods, UI notification triggers, tenancy mode, and accounts in multi-tenancy mode1. Two of the settings that an administrator can configure from the AppDynamics Controller Admin Console are:

• License allocation: This setting allows you to view and manage the license usage and availability for your Controller. You can see the total number of licenses, the number of licenses in use, the number of licenses available, and the license expiration date for each agent type. You can also allocate licenses to specific applications or accounts, and set license limits and alerts2.
• Retention periods: This setting allows you to specify how long the Controller retains the metric data and the event data for your monitored applications. You can configure the retention periods for different types of data, such as minute-level metrics, hour-level metrics, day-level metrics, transaction snapshots, and events. You can also configure the data purge schedule and the data backup schedule3.

References: Access the Administration Console, License Rules, Data Retention

To install a .NET Agent patch, which is a minor update to the existing .NET Agent version, you do not need to uninstall the old agent or restart the machine. You only need to follow these steps:

• Download the .NET Agent patch from the AppDynamics Download Center.
• Launch an elevated command prompt with full administrator privileges.
• Execute the Installer.bat file from the patch archive. The batch file installs the patch and starts the AppDynamics Agent Coordinator service.
• Restart the instrumented applications, such as IIS, Windows services, or standalone applications.

References: .NET Agent and How do I deploy a .NET Agent? in the AppDynamics documentation and community.

The AppDynamics REST API to retrieve metrics allows you to get values generated for metrics by specifying the path of the metric and the time frame for the data1. Some of the valid reasons to use this API are12:

• To archive 1-minute granularity data. The AppDynamics Controller stores metric data at different levels of granularity depending on the retention period. For example, it stores 1-minute granularity data for 8 days, 10-minute granularity data for 32 days, and 1-hour granularity data for 365 days. If you want to archive the 1-minute granularity data for longer than 8 days, you can use the API to retrieve and store the data in an external database or file system.
• To calculate a new metric based on two existing metrics. The AppDynamics Controller provides some built-in metrics such as average response time, calls per minute, errors per minute, etc. However, you may want to calculate a new metric that is not available in the Controller, such as the ratio of errors to calls, or the percentage of slow transactions. You can use the API to retrieve the values of the existing metrics and perform the calculation using your own logic or formula.
• To retrieve health rule violations. Health rules are the rules that define the performance and availability thresholds for your application components. When a health rule is violated, the AppDynamics Controller generates an event and optionally triggers a policy action. You can use the API to retrieve the list of health rule violations for a given application, time range, and severity level. This can help you monitor and troubleshoot the health of your application and take corrective actions if needed. References: Retrieve Metric Data, Health Rule API

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.

References:

• 1: Events Service Deployment - AppDynamics
• 2: Events Service Requirements - AppDynamics