PeerSpot user
Engineer at United Airlines
Real User
Agents have low CPU overhead compared to other agent-based products we have tried
Pros and Cons
  • "Autodiscovery of application topology, based on real user traffic."
  • "The GUI can be overwhelming at first to a novice Dev or Ops support person, and the possible root causes of an issue do not bubble up to the first screen you see."

What is our primary use case?

Monitor 1000's of .NET, Java, Node.js, and Go applications using an auto-discovering agent-based tool.

How has it helped my organization?

We have cut our MTTR by half just by deploying agents. It significantly reduced the amount of time that we spend building synthetic monitors. To the point, we rarely have to build any monitors unless it is a vendor app or appliance we can't access to install an agent on.  

What is most valuable?

  • Autodiscovery of application topology, based on real user traffic
  • Baselining of every single metric that you throw at it.
  • Easy to use API
  • Customizable extensions
  • Facilitates business, dev and ops communication
  • Agents have low CPU overhead compared to other agent-based products we have tried.

What needs improvement?

The GUI can be overwhelming at first to a novice Dev or Ops support person, and the possible root causes of an issue do not bubble up to the first screen you see.  We usually walk everyone through a few simple steps: 

  1. Click here to see errors and exceptions.
  2. Click here to see what is causing response time problems.
  3. Click here to view the timeframe of a past issue.
  4. Click here to drill down into the root cause at the method level snapshot.   
Buyer's Guide
AppDynamics
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about AppDynamics. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Very rarely. Solid performance on our controllers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None. The SaaS team worked with us on our rollout and expansion, making sure our controller is tuned for the metric and event loads.

How are customer service and support?

  • Great SaaS support, performance and uptime
  • Responsive support team
  • Responsive extension Dev team

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The previous tool was:

  • Clunky
  • Had difficulty in configuring alerting.
  • Did not use baselines.
  • Required hard thresholds for each metric.
  • Had a Java-based GUI, performed poorly.
  • Nobody wanted to use it.

How was the initial setup?

There is currently no automated agent management/upgrades for every agent type (currently the Universal Agent supports Java, expanding to .NET and machine agents in the future). So, if you do not have a solid automation tool already in use, deploying agents can be time consuming.   

What about the implementation team?

We had an in-house team of two people, and a vendor team assisting. The team was a mix of beginner to expert, and it worked out great.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Dynatrace and HPE Diagnostics.

What other advice do I have?

RUM, synthetics, mobile, network, and browser analytics make this a well-rounded tool.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr. Production Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Monitors CPU health and application health status
Pros and Cons
  • "We can make custom alerts in our system for specific issues like high CPU utilization or application downtime."
  • "The resolution time takes longer than expected."

What is our primary use case?

We use AppDynamics for monitoring purposes to check up on CPU health and application health status.

AppDynamics is used to monitor the health of our applications. If any application is down and linked up with AppDynamics, we can see it on the AppDynamics console. We can identify when a specific process went slow and the exact issue. Additionally, if there is any high CPU utilization or other issues, we can figure it out using AppDynamics.

It is very helpful as we can also make custom alerts in our system for specific issues like high CPU utilization or application downtime. We can even customize the alerts to be sent to a particular email domain for automatic notification, so there's no need to monitor it 24/7.

What is most valuable?

The monitoring feature is very useful. If you have multiple applications and systems with high CPU utilization or other issues, you don't need to monitor them individually. With AppDynamics, you can get all the information from the dashboard. It's very convenient.

What needs improvement?

There is room for improvement in the customer support team because finding a solution consumes a lot of time. When there's any issue, we need to reach out to the AppDynamic support team to get some idea of what the issue is. If anything is out of scope, we need to escalate the availability. It can be more dynamic because we need to go to the support portal to raise an incident, and it's time-consuming. Also, the resolution time takes longer than expected. If there were live support from AppDynamic's point of view, it would be really helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for the last three months. I am using the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AppDynamics is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. We have some support guys, admin guys, and other people using AppDynamics. In our organization, we have around 15 members using it.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not that complex. It is easy. I would give it a four out of ten. The deployment took two to three days.

What about the implementation team?

An in-house team did the deployment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I used some other tools, like Sterling Integrator, for EDI solutions.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
AppDynamics
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about AppDynamics. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Performance Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Useful monitoring, scales well, and straightforward implementation
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of AppDynamics is the scalability and monitoring."
  • "AppDynamics is new to the cloud and could improve its cloud services, they are following a monolithic monitoring approach."

What is our primary use case?

AppDynamics is an APM tool. We use it for application performance monitoring for a financial company. It is an end-to-end monitoring solution for any application and works with different technologies, such as Java and .NET.

The company was able to monitor their transactions with the financial institution to determine where the problems were in a particular brand. The company was satisfied with the performance of the solution.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has reduced our customer's time to resolve issues.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of AppDynamics is the scalability and monitoring.

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics is new to the cloud and could improve its cloud services, they are following a monolithic monitoring approach.

It's an agent-based software that must be deployed multiple times whereas competitors have one agent that can deploy everywhere.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using AppDynamics for approximately six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AppDynamics is a stable solution, but sometimes the analytics goes down and does not work or customers' addresses do not get collected. However, overall it is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

All of the IT and business staff are using the solution.

The scalability of the solution is good.

How are customer service and support?

The support could improve.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used Dynatrace prior to AppDynamics. The switch was a business decision.

How was the initial setup?

The process of implementing AppDynamics is straightforward, but it ultimately depends on your specific use case. You can easily implement an agent if you have a simple use case.

There is an agent that needs to be copied into the project and actioned to start.

Using it can be somewhat complex as it requires manual configuration, such as when creating a dashboard. If you have a more complex use case, the manual configuration can take a considerable amount of time. Additionally, there is a learning curve associated with this tool, and it takes time to gain expertise. It is not something that anyone can easily configure without investing the necessary time and effort.

It takes three to four months to become an expert in the tool to be able to use it effectively.

What about the implementation team?

To complete the implementation of the solution the staff that have access to production are involved. There are a few people that are needed.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a license needed to use the solution and it is expensive. The licensing model needs to improve.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are other solutions that are better at APM than AppDynamics.

What other advice do I have?

AppDynamics is primarily an APM tool, and if you're looking for end-to-end monitoring and AI ops capabilities, it may not be the best fit. For instance, if you want to analyze transitions, pinpoint failures, and view logs all in the same tool, AppDynamics may not provide a complete solution.

I rate AppDynamics an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good tracing capabilities and helpful technical support but needs better analytics
Pros and Cons
  • "Technical support is helpful."
  • "If it can be able to intelligently provide all the things we need to look at, from a data point of view, that would be very useful."

What is our primary use case?

We're a bank. We do use the predictive tools for the different products of the bank and the application which the bank utilizes.

How has it helped my organization?

AppD improves the productivity of Application Engineers, development teams, and other integrated items. Slowness or leak issue is a nut for the team now. Also, the team resolves or understands the network and query path every easy and resolves efficiently.

Our application uptime, increased by 10%, and overall productivity up by 30%.

Ticket or issue down by 12% over five years of use and experience.

Open to be applied and test any area and suite.

What is most valuable?

The tracing is the most important aspect of the solution. The way it traces the information within the particular application or within the particular infrastructure is great. That actually helps. Apart from that, all of the data that's in the production APM is good.  

Technical support is helpful.

The solution scales well.

The stability is good. 

What needs improvement?

We do have a combination of areas that need improvement. We do have the integration, such as end-user integration and experience that could be better. It is not just from the response point of view; it is more from the error and error detection point of view. This is due to the fact that these are all the banking applications as used by the banking staff, not by the end-user directly. Based on the banking staff feedback, based on the staff security or maybe dealing with the capital market, there needs to be some improvement.

They do provide the input growth on a daily basis in terms of what is coming in and how we receive the applications and how many we have. We've now started looking for a particular product that can make sure that it should connect with files and statements inside the product. 

The IO ratio, which we are looking for in terms of a report, is one of the concerns. We do monitor those details from AppDynamics, however, reporting and monitoring could be better.

There needs to be more analytics. That is what we are missing from the tool point of view. We need more information geared more towards helping us in making better decisions. When you do the coding that's for a banking situation or maybe in the incidents or capital market, it becomes very important that how much time I'm investing inside the transaction. A transaction which needs to be carried out for either confirming the payments or maybe either releasing the payments - these kinds of things. What I have seen with the use, as of now, is a bit of a lag when we are running on the global cloud or the public clouds, like Azure or the Google platform. 

Right now, we are fighting between three different stakeholders. With the networks, we have a different chat, with the vendors we have a different chat, and with the application team, we have a different chat. This approach doesn't provide a holistic view. Everyone has their own excuses and everyone has their own reasoning and conditions. 

If it can be able to intelligently provide all the things we need to look at, from a data point of view, that would be very useful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I would say that I have between seven and eight years of experience, hands-on. However, later on in the time frame, over the last four or five years, I have not has as much hands-on experience with the tool. I'm more involved in various solution discussions and strategy building with the platform on top of the tool.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would say it's very steady and for now, it's very reliable as well. It's stable. We don't have issues with bugs or crashes. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very scalable so far in any testing scenario. It performs very well and gives us the expected output which we are looking to improve. 

We are using the solution for more than 600 small and big applications. We have around 78,000 people, including the back-end staff and the development team, that use the solution.

How are customer service and support?

Overall, technical support has been very good. We're very satisfied with their level of support. So far, it's been very good for the bank.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used HPE BSM (now called MF APM). 

Due to these factors, we switch:

1. Costly

2. Implementation complexity

3. Multiple products and Integration

4. Not end-user friendly. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial implementation. Nowadays, the way we approach the teams, sometimes it's very easy when it's an application with a known language like Python or maybe with Ruby or a kind of Java application. In terms of gateways inside the product, sometimes it is very tough, and sometimes it is very easy to get deployed. We're not using any out-of-the-box security. 

What about the implementation team?

We have used model Train for the trainers and enforced all employees with operational training.

What was our ROI?

We achieve a great number, in terms of applications user availability increase by 30%. In treading, and agents, needs a smooth performance before the market starts. AppD provide a depth to measure any performances challenges, leak issue or even a chain linked issue story.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is a mixed bag. In some areas they are reasonably priced, however, in others, it's a bit expensive. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We look for ease of implementation, diagnostics information shared, and controls to the team for working.

What other advice do I have?

We're just an end-user of the product.

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

The deployment model depends on the solution or the size of the product which we are using, as the banks do have private and public clouds. In public clouds, we don't have much of the production instances. It's mainly the development. The free cloud and the cloud environment are completely on a private or in-house, on-premises solution with different ecosystems.

If a proper study has been done, and the solution makes sense for the company, I would recommend the solution. 

I would like to rate the solution at a seven out of ten. That consideration is mainly due to the fact that it covers a large portfolio of the product. It does have support for many other ERP tools. A lot of open customization is available and the product support team can help to customize the product. I've found this tool very useful and helpful on that.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Technology and Services at Arwen Technologies
Real User
Top 10
The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections
Pros and Cons
  • "I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions."
  • "AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer."

What is our primary use case?

We use AppDynamics to monitor application performance.

What is most valuable?

I like how the AppDynamics dashboard portrays the information flows. When a task is executed, various flows between different applications and databases happen in the background. The dashboard is intuitive and helps visualize the connections, the directions of the flow, and the information related to these specific sessions. 

What needs improvement?

AppDynamics is agent-based, so some customers are reluctant to install the agents in all their production environments. It would be helpful if they had an agentless version. It covers applications on the server, but the solution is weak on the network side. The agent is not deployed on the network components, so it cannot provide complete information about issues on the network layer.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used AppDynamics for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate AppDynamics six out of 10 for stability. The agent sometimes stops working when users perform upgrades on the application side. We have to restart it. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate AppDynamics seven out of 10 for scalability. I haven't had any difficulty receiving information on the main controller and propagating it on the dashboard. It also has a high-availability option. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate AppDynamics support nine out of 10. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

SolarWinds monitors the applications, but it only provides information within the system and does not tell you about information flows. 

How was the initial setup?

We can roll it out in a week if everything goes smoothly. However, we sometimes have compatibility issues with the agent. If the agent is not working correctly and providing the information, we might need to develop a customized agent or get one from the user community. 

What was our ROI?

The customers are happy, and we hear positive feedback from the users. It helps the application team and the developers by providing an excellent tool for troubleshooting performance problems. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate AppDynamics seven out of 10 for affordability. AppDynamics is an expensive solution. The price depends on the size of your environment. It's about $500,000 for a large enterprise. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate AppDynamics eight out of 10. It's on the high end of the Gartner quadrant, but it's lacking some features. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Tech stack visualization solution used for performance and transaction trace monitoring
Pros and Cons
  • "It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies."
  • "The overall performance of this solution could be improved. The hot-hot infrastructure features could also be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for performance and transaction trace monitoring. We use it for .Net and the JVM-related work. We look at all the heat maps and the Garbage Collection to see if there are any failures. 

What is most valuable?

It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies. 

What needs improvement?

The overall performance of this solution could be improved. The hot-hot infrastructure features could also be improved. If one goes down, the other should pick up automatically. When we patch one data center, the other primary or secondary center needs to be manually started. We need to do a manual sync between the database and the AppDynamics applications.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. The only drawback is that it is not a cluster environment and it doesn't have hot-hot features.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a scalable solution but we would like more options to hold more licenses. Right now we have 30,000 agents using this solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support for this solution is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before AppDynamics we used a product called BlueStripe that was acquired by Microsoft. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. The deployment is also straightforward because we used some of the provisioning tools to package the software and distribute it. Creating dashboards and fine-tuning JVMs took some time. 

What was our ROI?

This solution has really helped us to improve some of the performance of the JVMs at an early point in coding.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Beneficial application analysis, highly scalable, and great ROI
Pros and Cons
  • "I have found the main feature of the solution to be its ability to analyze an application's code to see where there are issues. Additionally, it is easy to use and configure."
  • "There are too many installers available for this solution."

What is our primary use case?

We have an application that we have made which is the core of our business. In many cases, new code comes out or there is older code that gets mixed with newer code and you will see slowdowns or problems that can happen. This solution gatherings all this different pertinent information about how long a particular piece of code sits in what stack of the application. When you have a slowdown or an issue is happening, you can look through the application processes step by step. You can find out where the application was lagging behind.

Most recently, we had a problem with some SQL queries that were not optimized in our application. It was taking approximately 30 seconds for the code to get a return. We were able to narrow down where the problem was by using this solution to find out what was taking a long time on that particular query, it turned out to be the DVAs. The DVAs were able to be fine-tuned to make the query a little bit more efficient because we were returning much more data than what was actually needed for that part. We were able to simplify it and it went from 30 seconds down half a second.

What is most valuable?

I have found the main feature of the solution to be its ability to analyze an application's code to see where there are issues. Additionally, it is easy to use and configure.

What needs improvement?

There are too many installers available for this solution. There is a separate installer for many things, for example, .net. There should be one installer for each operating system, such as Windows and Linux. They then can let you choose what options that you want for that particular operating system because trying to find all the different pieces separately is more complicated than it needs to be.

In an upcoming release, there could be better integration with the infrastructure. Currently, the solution is able to tell you where the problem is but it is not narrow enough. For example, it can show that the issue is in the data server and it took a certain time to process, but that does not necessarily narrow it down to the query where it actually was. You just know that the problem is within the database server. Sometimes it is very obvious it was the query, but other times it could be just that the server is light on resources. It would be beneficial if it could integrate more with some of the infrastructures to have the ability to correlate between the two to see whether the problem is actually with the code or it is a problem with the underlying infrastructure.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of this solution is fantastic. We have approximately 50 developers and six infrastructure engineers using this solution and our parent company has over 400 employees. I have found it to be a very good enterprise solution. 

If we hire more staff I think there could be in increase usage of this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer support is good. We have not had many big problems, the application just works. The solution has never taken down any of our servers. Other than calling support to figure out where a particular installer is and how to configure it properly, I have not needed to call them.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was straightforward. There were initial issues with licenses and we had to move some licenses around to give more to their lower environment systems to allow us to put all our information into one place. This took a while, they did not make this part very easy.

What about the implementation team?

Our parent company set up all the backend for this solution and I did all the client configurations on the actual servers. 

What was our ROI?

You save time by using this solution allowing you to utilize that saved time towards developing new features for your customers versus trying to troubleshoot the ones that are not working properly. The return on investment is instant.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a license required for each system that we use the solution on.

This solution is not the cheapest but it works well. You will end up doing more work with a cheaper solution than if you just spent the extra money on a better solution like this one. 

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others wanting to purchase this solution it is well worth the money. If you look at the quantity of time it takes you to track down a problem versus doing it the old-fashioned way, the amount of time saved by using a solution like this helps you move forward more quickly. 

I rate AppDynamics a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user858033 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manger Sr, IT Program Mgmt. at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We are able to correlate performance between tiers
Pros and Cons
  • "It has improved my organization because we are able to proactively and reactively look at performance issues."
  • "We are able to correlate performance between tiers."
  • "It needs strengthening in the database tiers."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is application performance monitoring. It performs well.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved my organization because we are able to proactively and reactively look at performance issues.

What is most valuable?

  • Looking at every tier in the application's path. 
  • Being able to correlate performance between tiers. 
  • Being able to drill down within the individual tiers for metrics.

What needs improvement?

It needs strengthening in the database tiers.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It seems stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have used the technical support, and it is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The previous solution seemed to be stagnated, in terms of its ability to monitor new technologies and its ability to move into a cloud/SaaS environment.

How was the initial setup?

It was both straightforward and complex to set up, like any tool. General configuration is usually straightforward, and when you start to look for integration or enhanced capabilities, that is when things start to get complex.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cost and licensing will constantly go up, so there are some cost opportunities there. 

The way it is structured in terms of price could be better. You pay for individual modules and that adds on to the cost, which detracts you from implementing those modules and slows you down. It would be better if there were more solutions incorporated into the base price. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated AppDynamics vs New Relic APM and Precise. It was really a customer-driven mandate at the time, so I do not know if it was a fair comparison end-to-end of capabilities and cost. 

What other advice do I have?

Look at the whole picture. Take into consideration what you get for specific pricing models and how much it costs to add on things you may need later.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: cost.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free AppDynamics Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free AppDynamics Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.