Introduction Cisco AppDynamics On-Premises Virtual Appliance is the pinnacle of modern on-prem observability, offering IT Operations teams AI-powered capabilities for rapid anomaly detection and root cause analysis. What if you could harness all of this without the complexity and resource demands of a full production setup? Enter the AppDynamics On-Premises Virtual Appliance. Designed for simplicity and speed, it lets you test AppDynamics' powerful features in your environment with minimal hardware requirements-or scale up to a high-availability production-grade clustered environment. In this guide, we'll walk you through deploying the AppDynamics Virtual Appliance using the "Demo" profile. Whether you're looking to explore new features or establish a robust test environment, this deployment offers a hassle-free start. Let's dive in and get you up and running in no time! Getting Started Currently supported virtualization environments include: VMWare vSphere VMWare ESXi Standalone AWS EC2 Azure Virtual Machines KVM (certified on Ubuntu Server, only for small profile) For the last three deployment options, we do provide a set of helper scripts to get the VA deployment started here. In this guide, we’ll use VMWare vSphere. Single Node Installation – “Demo Profile” While the initial profiles were targeted for production and high available environments, the newly introduced “Demo” profile can be used to quickly test a new setup or feature. And it uses significantly less resources. A single node with 16vCPU, 32GB RAM, and 500GB Disk is enough to start. Depending on the number of additional services to be installed (SecureApplication, Anomaly Detection/RCA, and other services released soon) it might need a bit more RAM. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll walk through a setup with VMWare vSphere on how to quickly setup the Virtual Appliance in Standard Deployment (also known as Greenfield). Please note, the Demo profile is not recommended for use in production. Also, it is not possible to grow a Demo profile to a full installation. Step 1 – Download the Virtual Appliance Visit AppDynamics Downloads portal to get the Agents, AppDynamics Platform components, and Virtual Appliance. Ensure you download the correct type for your environment; for VMware, this is the OVA. The download includes everything you need and can be deployed in an air-gapped environment without further internet connectivity. Step 2 – Install the Virtual Appliance through VMWare vSphere Deploying the Virtual Appliance is like any virtual machine from an OVA template. Detailed instructions can be found in the documentation. During deployment, enter the FQDN for the virtual appliance under step 6: Domain Name in the “Customize Template” section. The appliance requires DNS to function correctly; IP addresses alone are insufficient.   For air-gapped environments there is a workaround available using the nip.io wildcard dns resolution or modifying /etc/hosts files. Important: Do not select to auto-start the VM after deployment; additional configuration is required before the first boot. After a successful deployment only the VMware tools need to be enabled in the vApp Options. This step, from deploying the OVA to configuring the settings, should take no more than 15 minutes. Step 3 – First Boot After the initial boot, log in using the default credentials: appduser/changeme. You'll be prompted to change the password immediately. As the system completes its bootstrap tasks, check the status with appdctl show boot. If you encounter an error indicating that https://127.0.0.1/boot is unavailable, don't worry—this simply means the system is still processing its bootstrap tasks. You can monitor progress using watch systemctl status appd-os. This process may take an additional 10 minutes, so a bit of patience—or a quick coffee break—is recommended. After a successful bootstrap, the command appdctl show boot will show the following output. According to our documentation, you're advised to check next the different nodes and review the cluster status. However, as when using the Demo profile installation, you can safely skip this step. Step 4 - Installing AppDynamics Services Now we’re ready to install AppDynamics. So far, the process has been straightforward and quick. For a default installation, there's no need to modify any template files. However, if you'd like to customize the setup, you can edit /var/appd/config/globals.yaml.gotmpl and /var/appd/config/secrets.yaml to adjust the defaults. More information can be found here  To automatically install the license, simply place the license file in the /var/appd/config directory. Alternatively, you have the option to install the license manually later using the appdcli command. For the controller license, execute appdcli license controller <licensefile.lic>, and for the EUM license, use appdcli license eum <licensefile.lic>. Start the installation by running appdcli start appd demo. This command will deploy several Helm charts to install all the necessary components for AppDynamics, including: Controller & Database EUM Server Synthetics Server Events Service Other critical infrastructure services Once the command exits, the installation process continues in the background. You can monitor its progress by executing watch appdcli ping. For more detailed insights into the installation status, use kubectl get pods --all-namespaces or watch kubectl get pods -A | grep -v "Running". These commands will help you track the installation progress until the cisco-controller pod is fully operational, as it often takes the longest to transition to the running state. This process may take around 10 minutes to complete. Step 5 – Start using AppDynamics At this point, your newly configured controller via the Virtual Appliance should be accessible using the DNS name specified in Step 2. By default, the Virtual Appliance generates a self-signed certificate and exposes all services over HTTPS. Unlike traditional AppDynamics installations, the controller is not accessible on port 8090; instead, everything is unified behind a single DNS name, like our SaaS offering. Conclusion Congratulations! If you did the steps along this blog post, you've now successfully deployed the AppDynamics Virtual Appliance in just under 30 minutes. With your test environment up and running, you're now poised to explore the features AppDynamics offers, from application performance monitoring, real user monitoring, database monitoring, anomaly detection, root cause analysis to SecureApplication. This deployment not only serves as a valuable learning tool but also as a foundation for future expansions and integrations. Happy monitoring! ... View more