AppDynamics Smart Agent Management with GitHub Actions

aleccham · ‎11-12-2025

AppDynamics Smart Agent Management with GitHub Actions

Automated deployment and lifecycle management of AppDynamics Smart Agent across multiple EC2 hosts using GitHub Actions with a self-hosted runner.

https://github.com/chambear2809/github-actions-lab/tree/main

🎯 Overview

This lab demonstrates how to use GitHub Actions to manage AppDynamics Smart Agent and various AppDynamics agents (Node, Machine, DB, Java) across multiple Ubuntu EC2 instances within a single AWS VPC. The project includes 11 automated workflows covering the complete agent lifecycle.

Key Features:

🚀 Parallel Deployment - Deploy to multiple hosts simultaneously
🔄 Complete Lifecycle Management - Install, uninstall, stop, and clean agents
🏗️ Infrastructure as Code - All workflows version-controlled
🔐 Secure - SSH key-based authentication, private VPC networking
📈 Massively Scalable - Deploy to thousands of hosts with automatic batching
🎛️ Self-hosted Runner - Executes within your AWS VPC

📊 Architecture

All infrastructure runs in a single AWS VPC with a shared security group. The self-hosted runner communicates with target hosts via private IPs.

View detailed architecture diagrams →

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

AWS VPC with EC2 instances (Ubuntu)
Self-hosted GitHub Actions runner in the same VPC
SSH key pair for authentication
AppDynamics Smart Agent package and config

1️⃣ Clone and Configure

git clone https://github.com/chambear2809/github-actions-lab.git
cd github-actions-lab

2️⃣ Set Up GitHub Secrets

Navigate to: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions

Required Secret:

SSH_PRIVATE_KEY - Your SSH private key (PEM format)

3️⃣ Set Up GitHub Variables

Navigate to: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → Variables

Required Variable:

DEPLOYMENT_HOSTS - Target host IPs (one per line)
```
172.31.1.243
172.31.1.48
172.31.1.5
```

Optional Variables:

SMARTAGENT_USER - User for Smart Agent service (e.g., appdynamics)
SMARTAGENT_GROUP - Group for Smart Agent service (e.g., appdynamics)

4️⃣ Deploy!

Via GitHub UI:

Go to Actions tab
Select "Deploy Smart Agent"
Click "Run workflow"
Optionally adjust batch size (default: 256)
Click "Run workflow"

Via GitHub CLI:

gh workflow run "Deploy Smart Agent" --repo chambear2809/github-actions-lab

# With custom batch size
gh workflow run "Deploy Smart Agent" --repo chambear2809/github-actions-lab -f batch_size=128

📋 Available Workflows

Deployment (1 workflow)

Workflow Description Scale Trigger

Deploy Smart Agent (Batched)

Installs Smart Agent and starts service

Any

Manual only

Agent Installation (4 batched workflows)

Workflow Command Scale Trigger

Install Node Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl install node	Any	Manual only
Install Machine Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl install machine	Any	Manual only
Install DB Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl install db	Any	Manual only
Install Java Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl install java	Any	Manual only

Agent Uninstallation (4 batched workflows)

Workflow Command Scale Trigger

Uninstall Node Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl uninstall node	Any	Manual only
Uninstall Machine Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl uninstall machine	Any	Manual only
Uninstall DB Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl uninstall db	Any	Manual only
Uninstall Java Agent (Batched)	smartagentctl uninstall java	Any	Manual only

Smart Agent Management (2 batched workflows)

Workflow Description Scale Trigger

Stop and Clean Smart Agent (Batched)	Stops service and purges data	Any	Manual only
Cleanup All Agents (Batched)	Deletes /opt/appdynamics directory	Any	Manual only

Total: 11 workflows - All batched workflows support configurable batch sizes (default: 256)

📚 Documentation

Deployment Guide - Complete setup and configuration instructions
Architecture Diagrams - Visual infrastructure and workflow diagrams

🛠️ How It Works

Developer pushes code or manually triggers a workflow
GitHub Actions receives the event and assigns job to self-hosted runner
Runner loads target hosts from GitHub variables
Parallel Execution - Runner SSHs into each target host simultaneously
Commands Execute - Install/uninstall/stop/clean operations run on each host
Results Reported - Success/failure status sent back to GitHub

🔐 Security

Private Network - All communication via VPC private IPs
SSH Keys - Stored securely as GitHub secrets
No Public Access - Target hosts don't need public IPs
Security Group - Restricts SSH access to runner only

📈 Scaling

All workflows use automatic batching to support any number of hosts:

How It Works

Automatic batching - Splits hosts into groups of 256 (configurable)
Sequential batch processing - Avoids overwhelming runner resources
Parallel within batch - Each batch processes all hosts simultaneously
Works at any scale - 1 host to thousands

Batching Strategy

Splits your host list into manageable batches
Processes each batch as a separate job sequentially
Deploys to all hosts within each batch in parallel using background processes

Examples:

10 hosts = 1 batch, all deploy in parallel
500 hosts = 2 batches × 256 hosts
1,000 hosts = 4 batches × 256 hosts
5,000 hosts = 20 batches × 256 hosts

🤝 Contributing

This is a lab/demo project. Feel free to fork and adapt for your own use cases!