/url-monitoring-extension

An AppDynamics extension to monitor site urls

Primary LanguageJavaOtherNOASSERTION

URL Monitor for AppDynamics

An AppDynamics Machine Agent extension to visit a set of URLs and report whether they are up or down (and optionally whether certain text patterns appear on those pages).

This extension requires the Java Machine Agent.

Installation

  1. Download and unzip UrlMonitor.zip from the AppDynamics Community.
  2. Copy UrlMonitor directory where you installed the machine agent, under $AGENT_HOME/monitors.
  3. In $AGENT_HOME/monitors/UrlMonitor, edit the configuration files (monitor.xml and config.yaml) to configure the plugin.
  4. Restart the machine agent.

Configuration

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.yaml file. Note that the path is relative to $AGENT_HOME.

    <task-arguments>
      <argument name="config-file" is-required="true" default-value="monitors/UrlMonitor/config.yaml" />
    </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|

Examples

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

Configuration Reference

Client Config

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

Default Params

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.

Site Section

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.

ProxyConfig section

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

Auth Type

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

Match Pattern Section

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

Password Encryption Support

To avoid setting the clear text password in the config.yml, please follow the process to encrypt the password and set the encrypted password and the key in the config.yml

  1. Download the util jar to encrypt the password from here
  2. Encrypt password from the commandline java -cp "appd-exts-commons-1.1.2.jar" com.appdynamics.extensions.crypto.Encryptor myKey myPassword
  3. These values should be used in the passwordEncrypted and encryptionKey fields in config.yml

Metrics Provided

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), CANCELLED(1), FAILED(2), ERROR(3), SUCCESS(4)
  • Responsive Count(Available at GroupName Level) -> Number of sites in a given group, that responded successfully.

Sample Custom Dashboard

Support

For any questions or feature requests, please contact the AppDynamics Center of Excellence.

Version: 1.2.6
Controller Compatibility: 3.7 or later
Last Updated: 09/13/2017 Author: Todd Radel

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly via GitHub.

Community

Find out more in the AppDynamics Community.


Release Notes

Version 1.2.6

  • Added support for Client Side Cert auth and password encryption

Version 1.2.5

  • Added support for NTLM auth and ignoring SSL Cert errors

Version 1.2.4

  • Adding groupName to group multiple sites

Version 1.2.3

  • Fixed metric drop issue in case of large number of URLs

Version 1.2.2

  • Corrected issues with ignoreSSLErrors functionality.

Version 1.2.1

  • Added POST functionality.

Version 1.1.0

  • Added pattern matching against the retrieved pages.

Version 1.0.6

  • Version bump

Version 1.0.5

  • Added metadata for new extension repository.

Version 1.0.4

  • Rebranded as url-monitoring-extension.

Version 1.0.3

  • Added new config option treatAuthFailedAsError. If false, then 401 errors will be expected and treated as "OK" result.

Version 1.0.2

  • Replaced Apache HTTP Component library with Ning Async HTTP Client.

Version 1.0.1

  • Added support for self-signed SSL certificates.

Version 1.0

  • Initial release to AppSphere.