Understanding Your Options: Three Different Situations Explained
If you're using AppDynamics to monitor your Android mobile applications, you might wonder what happens to data collection in different situations - like when you want to stop monitoring, when licenses expire, or if there are connectivity issues with your AppDynamics Controller. This article explains exactly what your Android agent does in each of these scenarios.
Situation 1: You Want to Stop Mobile Monitoring (The Right Way):
When to use this: You want to temporarily or permanently disable mobile app monitoring through the AppDynamics platform.
How to Do It:
- Log into your AppDynamics Controller
- Go to User Experience → Mobile Apps → Configuration → Mobile App Group Configuration
- Click "Turn Off" monitoring for your mobile app
What Happens Next:
Think of this like turning off a light switch - it's clean and immediate:
- Your Controller sends a "stop monitoring" message through the system
- This message travels to your mobile app's AppDynamics agent
- The agent receives the message and writes in its log: "Agent disabled by collector until -1"
Bottom line: Your app stops collecting and sending any performance data to AppDynamics
What You'll See:
✅Agent stops collecting data immediately
✅No more data transmission to AppDynamics
✅Your app continues working normally
⚠️You might still see some device-level logs, but no AppDynamics data
Situation 2: Your AppDynamics License Expires:
What this means: Your AppDynamics subscription has ended, but you haven't removed the agent from your app yet.
What Happens:
Unlike a light switch, this is more like a dimmer that gradually turns down:
- Your Android agent keeps sending data to AppDynamics. This continues until either:
- You manually reset the license settings, OR
- Your current billing month ends
- New devices can't start monitoring, but existing monitored devices keep reporting
- Your license automatically changes from PRO to LITE features
What You'll See:
✅Mobile agents continue to send data to the EUM Collector until a): The license is explicitly reset, OR
The end of the current billing month is reached
❌New agent registrations are prevented during this period
📊The license converts from PRO to LITE
Important: This behavior is expected and by design.
Situation 3: AppDynamics Controller Becomes Unavailable
What this means: Your AppDynamics Controller is down, unreachable, or experiencing connectivity issues.
Important Note for SaaS Customers:
If you're using AppDynamics SaaS (cloud-hosted), AppDynamics manages the infrastructure. Controller outages are rare and typically resolved quickly by the AppDynamics team.
What Happens During an Outage:
Your Android agent doesn't know the Controller is down, so it acts like someone talking on a phone with a bad connection:
- Your mobile app continues generating performance data
- The AppDynamics agent keeps trying to send data
- You'll see these transmission attempts in your app's logs
Critical point: While the agent attempts to send data, this data is not processed by the EUM Collector and is dropped at the collector level
What You'll See:
📱Your app works normally for users
📋Agent logs show ongoing activity
❌No data reaches AppDynamics (it's dropped)
📊No monitoring insights available during outage
Complete Removal: Starting Fresh
When to use this: You want to completely remove AppDynamics monitoring from your mobile app.
The Process:
- Remove the AppDynamics agent code from your app's source code
- Build a new version of your app without AppDynamics
- Publish this new version to Google Play Store
- Users who update to the new version will have no AppDynamics agent
What This Achieves:
✅No agent logs in your application
✅No data collection attempts
✅Complete removal of AppDynamics code
✅Reduced app size and complexity
Key Takeaways:
- Graceful shutdown is the recommended approach for disabling mobile monitoring
- License expiration allows continued data transmission until explicit reset or billing period end
- Controller shutdown results in data being dropped at the collector level, though agents continue attempting transmission
- Complete removal requires publishing a non-instrumented application version
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: Will my app crash if AppDynamics Controller goes down?
A: No, your app will continue working normally. The agent just can't send monitoring data.
Q: How do I know if my agent is successfully disabled?
A: Check your app logs for the message: "Agent disabled by collector until -1"
Q: Can I re-enable monitoring after turning it off?
A: Yes, simply reverse the process in your AppDynamics Controller configuration.
Q: What's the difference between license expiration and controller shutdown?
A: License expiration allows limited continued monitoring, while controller shutdown means no data gets processed at all.
