Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises virtual appliance

Introduction

Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises Virtual Appliance, more generally known as the Virtual Appliance or Self-Hosted Virtual Appliance, is a self-contained application monitoring solution, prepackaged on a modern Kubernetes architecture. In this self-hosted option, it empowers organizations to adhere to data residency and protection requirements of organizations.

Optimized for simple setup on virtualization platforms, it provides the same depth of complete monitoring functionality as the Cisco AppDynamics Classic On-Premises solution. In addition to that, the features include

• AI-powered anomaly detection and root cause analysis
• Cisco Secure Application (CSA)
• Security enhancements.

Using the Virtual Appliance can help you maximize application performance, reduce operational overhead, and keep control over your environment.

 

The following Cisco AppDynamics components are available along with the other infrastructure services:

• Controller
• Event Service
• End User Monitoring 
• Synthetics Monitoring

 

Components

Components	Description
OS	·       Cisco Secured Linux (CSL) leveraged for building the Virtual Appliance OVA. ·       Cisco CSL Ubuntu is standard Ubuntu distribution with harderning done as per CIS standards. CSL is pre-installed with CiscoSSL 7.2 OpenSSL FOM with 140-2 FIPS Level 1 certification. ·       Based on Ubuntu 20-04-lts.
MicroK8s (Version 1.29)	Microk8s is a lightweight CNCF certified Kubernetes (k8s) distribution. Microk8s has been hardened to meet CIS k8s Benchmark v1.6.0. It offers a secure simple programmable process to bring up a k8s cluster.
Infrastructure Services	Cisco AppDynamics Services use the required infrastructure components such as, MySQL, Ingress controller, Elasticsearch, Kafka, PostgreSQL and so on.
Cisco AppDynamics Services	Cisco AppDynamics components such as, Controller, EUM, and Events service.

 

Deployment Model

The Virtual Appliance supports two deployment options:

·       Standard Deployment: Installs the Cisco AppDynamics Services, Infrastructure Services, Anomaly Detection and Cisco Secure Application Services in your Kubernetes cluster.

·       Hybrid Deployment: Leverages your current Controller, Events Service, and End User Monitoring components from Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises while installing Anomaly Detection and Cisco Secure Application Services in your Kubernetes cluster.

 

Advantages

AppDynamics Virtual Appliance offers several advantages due to modern AI and security services, all built on Kubernetes®, in particular MicroK8s. Modern infrastructure providing distributed services for scaled deployment without a single issue of incompatibility. All of that is combined into a single OVA for easy deployment as a virtual appliance.

 

AppDynamics virtual appliance advantages:

 1.     Simplified Deployment and Maintenance:

a.     Ease of installation with pre-configured setup.

b.     Automatic updates and patches.

         2.     Enhanced Security:

a.     Pre-hardened image for better security.

b.     Isolated environment reducing risk.

          3.     Consistency and Reliability:

a.     Standardized configuration for predictable performance.

b.     Integrated monitoring tools.

          4.     Scalability:

a.     Streamlined scaling by deploying additional instances.

           5.     Features:

a.     Newer features like Secure App and AIOps (and more to come)

1.  High level comparison between Classic and Virtual appliance On-Premises

	Classic On-Prem	Virtual Appliance on-prem
Ease of & Upgrades	⭐	⭐⭐⭐
New Features	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐
Scalability	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐
Customization	⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐
Maturity & Support	⭐⭐⭐	⭐
Server Footprint	⭐	⭐⭐⭐