Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enables you to deploy and manage containerized applications more easily with a fully managed Kubernetes service. AKS offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. Unite your development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.
AppDynamics seamlessly integrates into AKS environments, providing insights into the performance of every microservice deployed; along with container and k8s visibility; all through a single pane of glass. AppDynamics provides enterprise-grade, end-to-end performance monitoring for applications orchestrated by Kubernetes.
AKS makes it easier to operate Kubernetes clusters; however, performance monitoring remains one of the top challenges in Kubernetes adoption. In fact, according to a recent CNCF survey, 46% of enterprises reported monitoring as their biggest challenge. Specifically, organizations deploying containers on the public cloud, cite monitoring as a big challenge. Perhaps because cloud providers monitoring tools may not play well with organization’s existing tools which are used to monitor on-premises resources.
The AppDynamics Cluster Agent enables CloudOps team to get deep level visibility into AKS clusters, including every node, pod, and namespace down to the container level. The Cluster Agent utilizes the existing Kubernetes Metrics Server API to bring back key performance data at the cluster, namespace, and node level. The agent displays metrics on Events, Pods, Deployments, Daemon-sets, Jobs, Services, Service Endpoints, Quotas, Configs, Containers, and Resource Limits.
In addition, the machine agent runs as a DaemonSet on AKS worker nodes, and application agents are deployed alongside your application binaries within the application pods. Out-of-the-box integration gives you the deepest visibility into AKS cluster health, Azure resources and Docker containers, and provides insights into the performance of every microservice deployed—all through a single pane of glass.
We have created a multi-service application containerized with Docker that is ready to deploy to Azure using AKS. As part of the workshop, you will deploy the application on AKS and walkthrough the steps to establish full stack monitoring for the application.
| Lab Exercise | Description | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clone GitHub Repository & Retrieve AKS Kubernetes Cluster Configuration | 15 minutes |
| 2 | Verify Access to the Controller VM Instance | 15 minutes |
| 3 | Deploy AD-Capital Application to the AKS Kubernetes Cluster | 30 minutes |
| 4 | Deploy the Server Agent & Network Agent to AKS | 20 minutes |
| 5 | Deploy the Cluster Agent to AKS | 40 minutes |
To ease the effort, we have created a couple of Azure VM Images using automated tooling. The following diagram explains the workflow of the labs and how participants will interact:
- Clone GitHub Repository & Retrieve AKS Kubernetes Cluster Configuration
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to clone a Github repository and retrieve your Kubernetes cluster configuration from Azure AKS.
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to clone a Github repository and retrieve your Kubernetes cluster configuration from Azure AKS.
- Verify Access to the Controller VM Instance
- In this step you will use a browser to login to the AppDynamics Controller console as well as run a REST command to validate the Controller status from the command-line.
- In this step you will use a browser to login to the AppDynamics Controller console as well as run a REST command to validate the Controller status from the command-line.
- Deploy AD-Capital Application to the AKS Kubernetes Cluster
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the AD-Capital application to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the AD-Capital application to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.
- Deploy the Server Agent & Network Agent to AKS
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the Server Agent and Network Agent to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the Server Agent and Network Agent to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.
- Deploy the Cluster Agent to AKS
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the AppDynamics Kubernetes Cluster Agent to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.
- In this step you will use the Launch Pad VM instance to deploy the AppDynamics Kubernetes Cluster Agent to the AKS cluster and monitor the results of the deployment in the AppDynamics Controller.