DEV Community: Akash

Introduction to Dynatrace: Elevate Your Application Monitoring Game.

Akash — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 12:16:06 +0000

What is Dynatrace?
Dynatrace is an application performance monitoring (APM) tool, its helps organizations in tracking and improving the performance of their software applications.
In simpler words, Dynatrace helps companies keep an eye on their application and websites to make sure they're working properly and accessible smoothly. dynatrace does this by collecting data on how the application is performing, identifying any issues, and providing in detail information. This helps organizations to ensure that their applications are running smoothly, which is important for delivering a good user experience.
Dynatrace can be used to monitor and optimize the performance of various types of software applications, infrastructure, and user experience, helping you to make sure a positive user experience, reduce downtime, and optimize costs.

For example, you have a web application that serve to the thousand users and with dyanatrace you can monitor the performance of your application , and you can identify the slowness or the response time.
its provide insights how the application performing including application code , network calls etc

Dynatrace provide some capabilities for monitoring and analyzing the performance of your application as follow:

Real User monitoring  It analyzes the performance of the application when the user interacts with the web application whether its is from mobile device or via desktop
Mobile app monitoring  Dynatrace supports real user monitoring to the mobile app also, but the process of monitoring the mobile app is different from browser monitoring because the platform is different.
Server-side monitoring  The application which runs based on the web pages and the pages served by the web server like Apache or Tomcat or any web container, the request sent to the specific server is an example of server-side.
Cloud and virtual machine monitoring  The process of tracking and managing the performance, availability, and resource utilization of cloud-based infrastructure and virtual machine.
Container monitoring  this involves monitoring and managing the performance, health, and process utilization of containerized applications and container infrastructure.

The above picture shows the things which can do with dynatrace

How does dynatrace work?

Automatic discovery: Dynatrace's PurePath technology automatically discovers every component and dependency of an application. For example, let's say you have a web application that includes a web server, an application server, a database, and a caching layer. Dynatrace's PurePath technology would automatically discover all these components and their dependencies.

Modeling: Once Dynatrace has discovered all the components, its Smartscape technology models the behaviour and interactions between them. This allows Dynatrace to understand how each component affects the performance of the entire system. In our example, Dynatrace's Smartscape technology would model how requests flow through the web server, application server, database, and caching layer.

Monitoring: Dynatrace's OneAgent technology continuously monitors the behavior of each component, collecting and unifying operational and business performance metrics for all types of entities in the application environment. In our example, Dynatrace's OneAgent technology would collect metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, and network traffic for each component.

Artificial intelligence: Dynatrace's AI engine, Davis, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to analyze the data collected by OneAgent and identify anomalies and problems. For example, if the CPU usage of the application server suddenly spikes, Davis would alert you to the issue and provide insights into the root cause.

Full-stack monitoring: All of these technologies work together to provide full-stack monitoring of the application environment. This allows you to see how each component affects the performance of the entire system and quickly identify and resolve issues.

“Dynatrace has an Automatic discovery, full-stack monitoring, AI- analysis, and scalability that makes it a unique and powerful monitoring solution than other monitoring solutions.”

Monitoring Environment where one agent send the capture data from server where Dynatrace is installed and send it to the monitoring env where the user can see the data in better view on the dashboard, charts, and reports.
we can setup multiple env monitoring for prod or dedicated developer or on the staging area

How actual data is present in the form of visual, for more refer below link

https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/get-started/dynatrace-ui/interact-visualizations
Here is a quick start:

Synthetic vs RUM Monitoring

Synthetic and RUM these are two distinct monitoring type that are used to get insights into the performance and health of the application

Synthetic monitoring involves reproducing the user interaction with the application to test its performance under different conditions. usually, synthetic monitor used automated scripts to test the user interaction with an application, like visiting a website and clicking on some content on the site.
This monitoring identifies any issue with the new release application before runs to the live production if identify an issue it’s easier to rollout from production or other environment.

For Example let’s consider any e-commerce website where synthetic monitor place and users interact with website like visiting a site, selecting any item, adding that item to cards and checkout that item, and finally payment for the item. If any issue occurs during this procedure synthetic monitor detects that issue and reports, it to the operation or monitoring team in the form of alerts with problems, so that the team can investigate further.

Another is RUM (Real User Monitoring) as the name suggest this monitor involves collecting and analyzing the real user interaction with an application. Like how the user interacts with the application via desktop, mobile or any specific browser to the applications and provides information of user experience, server response time, page load time, any error occurrence, and network I/O all insights get in the form of matrices. This monitoring provides an accurate picture of how users are using the application.
both synthetic and RUM monitoring plays an important role in application monitoring and can be used together to get every detail of the application.

Conclusion:

In the end, dynatrace is an advanced application performance monitoring tool that helps the organization to get every single detail of their application in one dashboard and in a graphical manner, it provides real-time visibility into applications, infrastructure, and user experiences. Dynatrace has many features like full-stack monitoring, AI- analysis, and scalability that make it a unique and powerful monitoring tool that helps businesses improve satisfaction with clients.

Automating AEM bulk Publishing Using Jenkins.

Akash — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 12:00:24 +0000

Overview
This article explains how to use a Jenkins job and shell script to activate and deactivate various pages or paths in AEM. Once you have done creating or modifying your page next step is to make that page publish. Then again, navigate to that page’s correct path in the Website Console, then right-click the page and select the "Active" option. What If you have multiple pages to active, it’s a little bit time-consuming. So, using a single Jenkins job, you may activate several pages simultaneously. Before I continue, let me give a little introduction about the "cURL tool”

What is cURL?
The term stands for “Curl URL Request Library”. A cURL is a command-line tool it is suitably used for transferring and manipulating data to the server or from the server. It Follows the rule REQUEST-RESPONSE, a client that requests something from a server and receives an answer from the server. It can send data using a variety of protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SCP, SMTP, LDAP, etc. It is excellent for automating processes, and if you know how to script, you can develop strong tools that can simplify your work process.
Most of the OS systems now come with cURL pre-installed.
To verify open CMD/TERMINAL and type “curl –help)
cURL use in AEM.
Since AEM is based on REST protocols, you may do a certain task, including building, installing, and replicating packages, using curl. Additionally, check OSGI configuration, manage users and groups, lock and unlock page, and even more.
You probably have a fundamental understanding of curl. Let’s now turn this blog's main goal into execution.

What is Jenkins?
Jenkins is a free and open-source automation tool that may be used to automate any kind of task related to building, testing, delivering, or deploying software. Today, CI/CD workflow is frequently implemented by IT firms. It can be installed on any computer that has [Java Runtime Environment] JRE.
How to create a Jenkins job that activates and deactivates multiple AEM pages.
Here, we are choosing the freestyle job in this demo.
The freestyle job is a flexible alternative that is simple to set up and use. Also, it gives us more options for other build jobs.
Follow the steps mentioned below to create a job.

Log in to Jenkins Dashboard. Go to your Jenkins URL and sign into the dashboard to create a Jenkins freestyle job. Jenkins is hosted on localhost http://localhost:8080; you can visit your Jenkins dashboard using the appropriate URL.
Generate a new item. Once you've logged in, select "New Item" from the Jenkins dashboard, type the name of your job, choose the "Freestyle Project" and then click "OK".
Enter the Job details. Choose the option "This project is parameterized" and enter the project description in the General tab as needed. (Parameters permit you to prompt users for one or more inputs that will be used to pass into a build) . Then click on “Add-parameter” and choose “Multi-Line string parameter” form the drop-down list of add parameter option. Refer to the screenshot below.

Here, I've given the option the name "user_input" and included a description.

Add one more parameter. Click "Add-Parameter" and choose "option parameter" to add a further parameter to our job. After that enter the name of parameter and choice of action to be performed. Refer to the screenshot below.

Up to this point, we have just covered the user input field by providing input as the pages' path using the first parameter. We have specified the action to be taken, whether to activate or deactivate the page, in the second parameter.

Add credential details. After that go to the “Build Environment” under that you will find option named “Use secret text(s) or file(s).” click this option and a new box will be there named as “Binding” and under it Add option. Click Add button and choose the option “Username and password (separated)”.

A new prompt will pop up continuing to follow that. Here, you must enter the authentic login and password for your AEM instance in two different variables, one for the username and the other for the password. (Later in the script we have to call that variable)
Select your credentials from the credentials store after that.

If you haven’t already stored your credential, you have to click on Add button and enter your real username and password details.
Note: You can manually add credentials from the manage Jenkins's option, if they do not really appear on the job page. Refer to the screenshot below.
Go to the Jenkins home dashboard > Left panel option> Manage Jenkins >Manage Credentials >system>global Credentials >Add Credentials >Enter real username and password> Click create.

Execute shell script. Now click on “Build Tab” and click the option “add-build step” and choose option “Execute shell” from the drop-down list. Copy and paste the below script to the Command box.

#!/bin/bash
set +ex
#variable section 
url=http://localhost:4502/bin/replicate.json
function content() #Function for user multiple inputs
{
    if [ ! -z "$1" ] &&  [ -f "$1" ]; then
        echo $(<"$1")
    else
        echo "" 
        echo "Please type or paste page path you wish to Activate or Deactivate." 
        echo "" 
 # Press CTRL+D once done with entering input(If script executing from any Linux OS for Jenkins job no need).
        IFS= read array -t '' ${user_input}
        printf '%s\n' "${user_input[@]}"          # Output as a newline-delimited string.

    fi
}
path=$(content "$2")
#echo "$path"

    #Function for activate page
    function activate()
    {
for i in $path #Iterating pages one-by-one
        do
#calling Jenkins variable for credentials ${user}:${pass}
        curl -s -u ${user}:${pass} -X POST -F path=$i -F cmd="activate" $url | grep -q "200"
        echo "$i ==> Page has been Activate."
        sleep 5;
        done
    }
    #Function for deactivate page
    function deactivate()
    {
        for i in $path
        do
        curl -s -u ${user}:${pass} -X POST -F path=$i -F cmd="deactivate" $url | grep -q "200"
        echo "$i ==> Page has been Deactivated."
        sleep 5;
       done
    }
#calling Activate choice parameter from Job 
if [ ${active_deactive} == 'Active' ];
then 
activate
else
deactivate
 fi

OR The build trigger option in the job's SCM section allows you to invoke the script.
Your job is now ready to build after you click the save option.

Build a job. After saving a Jenkins job you will get back to the Jenkins dashboard, on the left panel of dashboard click on the “Build with parameter option”. A new prompt will appear where you have to enter Page path and select action to perform whether active or deactivate. After that click on “build”. Refer the below screenshot.

Verify Expected output After building open the browser and enter web console URL i.e. http://localhost:8080/siteadmin#/ and enter the correct path of page and verify whether it’s active or not.

If the page's published status is Green, it has been successfully activated.
Jenkins Output for activating page:

Likewise, you must follow Step 7 and choose the Deactivate option if you want to deactivate the page.

If the page's published status is Red, it has been successfully deactivated.
Jenkins Output for deactivating page:

Conclusion
So here it is! You now have a basic understanding of how the curl command works. In using AEM, it can be helpful to automate several daily tasks. Things like managing packages, bundles, node, pages, users and groups, etc. In addition, Jenkins is a great CI/CD tool with customization options, and the best part is that this is free to use. and very beneficial when it comes to reducing workloads through automation. Thank you for reading, and I hope you find this blog to be useful.