DevOps / AppDynamics Interview questions
What is the difference between the Machine Agent and the Network Agent?
Both agents run at the host level rather than inside an application process, but they observe different layers of what's happening on that host.
| Machine Agent | Network Agent |
| Reports OS/hardware metrics: CPU, memory, disk, uptime. | Reports TCP-level network metrics between tiers. |
| Extensible via shell/Java-based custom extensions. | Not extension-based; focused specifically on network flow data. |
| Required for most Server Visibility features. | Used specifically for Network Visibility and diagnosing network-layer latency. |
| Runs independently of any App Agent. | Works alongside an App Agent to map network metrics to specific application flows. |
In practice, the Network Agent is what lets you tell the difference between "the application code is slow" and "the network path between two tiers is dropping packets or adding latency," a distinction the Machine Agent's host-level metrics alone can't make.
Which agent is used to distinguish application-code slowness from network-path latency?
Which agent is extensible with custom shell or Java scripts?
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