500-425 Cisco AppDynamics Associate Administrator (CAAA) Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

An HTTP Data Collector is a type of data collector that captures data from HTTP requests and responses. It can capture three kinds of data: parameter values, headers, and cookies. Parameter values are the values of the query string or form parameters in the HTTP request. Headers are the key-value pairs that are sent or received as part of the HTTP request or response. Cookies are the small pieces of data that are stored by the browser and sent to the server with each request. An HTTP Data Collector can be configured to capture any of these data types by specifying the name of the parameter, header, or cookie in the data collector settings. The captured data can be used for various purposes, such as adding context to business transactions, creating custom metrics, or triggering health rules.

https://community.appdynamics.com/t5/NET-Agent-Installation/HTTP-Data-Collector-How-to-know-the-HTTP-Params-name/td-p/24186

To create a user in the web user interface, you need to go to Settings > Groups and Roles > Create User. This option allows you to add a new user account and assign it to one or more groups. You can also specify the user’s name, email, password, and authentication method1 References: 1: Create Users

https://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRO45X/Install+the+Database+Agent

To properly configure a database agent from a zip file, you need to provide the following minimum details:

Controller Host: This is the hostname or IP address of the machine where the Controller is installed. You need to specify this so that the Database Agent can communicate with the Controller and send the collected data1

Controller Port: This is the port number that the Controller listens on for incoming connections. You need to specify this so that the Database Agent can connect to the Controller using the correct protocol. The default ports are 8090 for HTTP and 8181 for HTTPS for on-premise Controllers, and 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS for SaaS Controllers1

Account Access Key: This is the key that authenticates the Database Agent with the Controller. You need to specify this so that the Database Agent can register itself with the Controller and access the license. You can find the account access key in the Controller UI under Settings > License > Account1

Account Name: This is the name of the account that the Database Agent belongs to. You need to specify this so that the Database Agent can associate itself with the correct application and user permissions. You can find the account name in the Controller UI under Settings > License > Account1

References: 1: Install the Database Agent

According to the Transaction Thresholds document1, you can set static thresholds for individual business transactions by selecting Individual Transaction Thresholds from the Business Transaction Configuration window. You can then specify the values for Slow, Very Slow, and Stall thresholds for each business transaction. This way, you can customize the thresholds according to the SLA and the expected performance of the long-running transactions. Setting the default thresholds or adjusting the health rules would affect all the business transactions, not just the long-running ones. Therefore, the correct answer is C. References:

Transaction Thresholds

One possible reason why Java APM agents used in a production environment are consistently found to be disabled while no development environments exhibit this behavior is that the production agents are running out of heap memory and crashing. This can happen if the production agents are monitoring a high volume of business transactions, metrics, or snapshots, and the default heap size is not sufficient to handle the load. To resolve this issue, you can enable the heap-storage-monitor-enabled setting on the agent, which allows the agent to monitor its own heap usage and automatically reduce the amount of data it collects when the heap usage reaches a certain threshold. This can help to prevent the agent from running out of memory and crashing. You can also adjust the heap-storage-monitor-threshold setting to specify the percentage of heap usage that triggers the data reduction1. Alternatively, you can also increase the heap space for the agent by using the -Xmx option in the agent startup script, but this may require more resources from the host machine2.

The other options are not valid solutions to resolve this issue. Enabling agent auto-restart in the controller UI will not prevent the agent from crashing due to heap exhaustion, but only restart the agent after it crashes. This may cause data loss and performance degradation3. Decreasing the worker thread count will not affect the heap usage of the agent, but only limit the number of concurrent tasks that the agent can execute. This may reduce the agent throughput and responsiveness.

https://docs.appdynamics.com/display/PRMY22/Java+Agent

https://docs.appdynamics.com/appd/23.x/latest/en/application-security-monitoring/cisco-secure-application-requirements

According to the Reports document1, the Report Type field determines what kind of information is captured in the report. There are different report types available, such as Application Health Report, Dashboard Report, Controller Audit Report, and so on. Each report type has different fields in the Report Data tab that can be customized. Therefore, to get the desired information in the report, you need to select the appropriate Report Type from the dropdown menu when creating a scheduled report. References:

Reports

According to the Cisco AppDynamics Associate Administrator Certification document1, one of the topics covered in the exam is “Monitor agent performance and connectivity”. To do this, you need to ensure that the application agent can communicate with the controller, which may require SSL configuration if the controller is using SSL2. You also need to check that there are enough licenses available on the controller for the application agent to register and report data3. If the agent is using the wrong application name or does not have enough memory, it may not start at all or may crash, which are different problems from not being able to connect to the controller. References:

Cisco AppDynamics Associate Administrator Certification

Configure SSL for the Controller and the App Server Agent

License Rules and Restrictions

Health Rules are the rules that define the normal or expected behavior of your application, such as the response time, error rate, or CPU utilization of a business transaction, tier, node, or backend. You can create health rules to monitor the performance and availability of your application and its components. When a health rule is violated, it changes the status of the corresponding key performance indicator (KPI) from normal to warning or critical, depending on the severity of the violation. The status change is also represented as an event in the AppDynamics Controller UI, which can trigger alerts, policies, and actions. You can view the health rule events in the Events tab of the application dashboard, or in the Health tab of the entity dashboard.

https://developer.cisco.com/docs/appdynamics/health-rules/

https://university.appdynamics.com/certifications/associate-administrator

When creating a Health Rule condition, you can use baselines instead of defining a specific threshold for some metrics. Baselines are the dynamic values that represent the normal or expected behavior of a metric, based on the historical data collected by the AppDynamics Cognition Engine. Using baselines can help you account for the variations and seasonality of your application performance, and avoid false positives or negatives. You can use baselines for metrics that have a non-zero average value and a meaningful deviation, such as the overall average response time of a business transaction or an expression containing multiple metrics. You cannot use baselines for metrics that have a zero average value or a negligible deviation, such as the Business Transaction errors per minute or the calls per millisecond.https://www.appdynamics.com/product/how-it-works/application-performance-baseline

https://developer.cisco.com/docs/appdynamics/health-rules/

To examine the Java App agent logs on a host without login access, you can use the Controller UI to request the agent logs. This feature allows you to download the agent logs from the Controller UI without having to access the host machine. You can specify the log level, the time range, and the file size limit for the logs12 References: 1: Request Agent Logs 2: Java Agent Logging

A group can contain multiple roles, which means that the users in the group inherit the permissions of all the roles assigned to the group. For example, you can create a group that has both the Administrator and the Analytics Administrator roles, and the users in that group can perform both the administration and the analytics tasks1 References: 1: Roles and Permissions

The default length of time events can be viewed with full detail before being purged is 7 days, unless archived. Events are records of significant occurrences in the monitored environment, such as errors, exceptions, policy violations, health rule violations, and more. You can view the events in the Controller UI under Events > All Events. You can also archive the events to retain them for longer periods or export them to external systems1 References: 1: Events

The Database Collector’s Hardware Monitoring configuration allows you to enable the Database Agent to monitor the server hardware in addition to the database. You can choose from the following operating systems: Linux, Windows, and Solaris1 You need to provide the credentials and the connection details for the server that hosts the database1 References: 1: Configure the Database Agent to Monitor Server Hardware

According to the Database Visibility Supported Environments document1, Database Visibility can monitor the following databases: PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase ASE, Sybase IQ, and Couchbase. Therefore, the correct answer is A, B, and D. Derby and DB2 are not supported by Database Visibility. References:

Database Visibility Supported Environments

Error configuration is a feature in AppDynamics that allows you to exclude certain types of errors and exceptions from being reported on the dashboard. You can use error configuration to filter out noise and focus on the most relevant and actionable issues.

According to the Error Configuration - AppDynamics, the following types of errors and exceptions can be excluded using error configuration:

Database error return codes: These are codes that indicate a problem with the database server, such as 0x80004005 (access denied) or 0x8000005E (access violation). You can exclude these errors from being reported on the dashboard by adding them to the error configuration list.

JavaScript errors: These are errors that occur in the browser due to invalid or malformed JavaScript code, such as syntax errors or reference errors. You can exclude these errors from being reported on the dashboard by adding them to the error configuration list.

Therefore, A (Database error return codes) and C (JavaScript errors) are two options that can be excluded using error configuration. References:

Error Configuration - AppDynamics

Cisco AppDynamics Associate Administrator Certification

[Create and Manage Error and Exception Configurations - AppDynamics]

The UniqueHostID agent property is recommended to be used when the machine agent is with multiple app agents on the same machine or when the machine agent is with an app agent on the same machine. This property allows you to specify a unique identifier for the host machine that overrides the default hostname resolution. This helps to avoid conflicts or confusion when multiple agents are running on the same host or when the hostname is not consistent across different agents1 References: 1: How are you able to associate the machine agent with application

According to the Upgrade the Java Agent document1, one of the reasons to upgrade AppDynamics agents is to resolve agent issues, such as bugs, performance problems, or compatibility issues withthe Controller or the monitored application. Another reason to upgrade AppDynamics agents is to take advantage of new features, such as enhanced metrics, dashboards, alerts, or integrations, that are introduced in newer agent versions. Therefore, the correct answer is A and D. Database issues and application upgrade are not directly related to the agent upgrade, unless they affect the agent functionality or compatibility. References:

Upgrade the Java Agent