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"12 Days of CA APM - Day 10 : CA Release Automation Integration”

By mursr01 posted Dec 18, 2014 11:30 AM

  

 

Koustubh Warty – Application Delivery SWAT contributed to the blog

 

On the eighth day of APM 9.7, the CA Team gave to me… CA Release Automation Integration

 

The installation, configuration and deployment of CA APM 9.7 agents can now be automated by CA Release Automation, previously known as CA LISA® Release Automation.  CA Release Automation enables organizations to overcome some of the challenges of deploying high quality applications quickly and efficiently from development through production by automating the deployment and release process tasks.

 

The integration eliminates some of the manual processes involved in deploying APM agents such as extracting agent binaries, configuring IntrocopeAgent.profile file, adding custom jar/pbd files, configuring agent startup arguments and other tasks specific to your monitoring environment.

 

CA Release Automation evaluates the manifest of an application to be deployed and can add APM monitoring agents to that application prior to it being deployed. Release Automation manages the deployment by creating process flows which are combination of Actions and Flows (See below).

 

 

Below are the steps (screenshots below) to deploy APM agents on a Tomcat server using CA Release Automation.

 

  1. The first steps is the extraction of the APM agent artifacts from the source repository and copying to the target folder on the destination application server.
  2. The second step is the configuration of the Introscopeagent.profile. The typical steps require changing the default location of the Enterprise Manager from localhost to the 'server name' and related properties in the profile file.
  3. The next step is to add the agent startup parameters to the application server startup script.
  4. The monitoring agents start up as the application starts and reports performance metrics right away.

  

Extract APM Agent

  • Extracts the APM Agent artifact and deploys to the destination folder on the target machine

Configure APM Agent

  • File to be modified is IntroscopeAgent.tomcat.profile in the <APM_HOME>\wily\core\config folder as indicated in the APMAgentConfigFile variable
  • By default the location of APM Enterprise Manager is set to localhost
  • This location will be changed to the actual address as indicated by the APM_Server_Name variable

Configure App Startup

  • Modify the startup file for your particular application
  • In this case for Forward Cars application, we have modified the server.json (a startup configuration file for Forward Cars) file to add the APM Agent information
  • Note this will be different based on your application and the app server it uses
  • As an example, if you are using Tomcat for your app then you would modify the Catalina.bat to indicate the location of the APM agent jar as well as the profile file

 

 

Below is a screenshot of CA APM agents monitoring ForwardCars application. All monitoring components pre-configured and deployed as part of the application build by CA Release Automation.

The deployment process is pretty straightforward and fast. The APM agents can all be installed—all hands off thereby minimizing any configuration issues. CA Release Automation can deploy APM agents across your application lifecycle collecting consistent application and performance data, fostering better collaboration between Dev and Ops teams and ensuring flawless end user experience of your critical applications.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

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The 12 Days of APM Blog Series

 

Twelve (12/19)

Eleven (12/18)

Ten CA Release Automation Integration (12/17)

Nine Node.js Monitoring (12/16)

Eight APM PHP Monitoring (12/15)

Seven CA UIM Integration (12/14)

Six MongoDB Monitoring (12/13)

Five Rich Email Notifications with Contextual Data (12/12)

Four Smart Instrumentation (12/11)

Three Mobile App Analytics (12/10)

Two APM Command Center (12/9)

and an E.P.I.C APM Strategy  (12/8)

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