Workshop Overview

Use case, architecture, prerequisites, and the differences between hybrid and dual signal mode.

The Use Case #

Your organization runs AppDynamics for APM today. As part of a data visibility and governance initiative, leadership wants application performance data flowing into Splunk Observability Cloud as well giving teams a unified view alongside infrastructure metrics, logs, and other signals already in Splunk.

Rather than re-instrumenting every service with a separate OpenTelemetry SDK, the AppDynamics Java Agent supports dual signal mode: a single agent produces both AppDynamics APM data and OpenTelemetry traces simultaneously. This lets you maintain full AppDynamics functionality while streaming the same telemetry to Splunk Observability Cloud through an OpenTelemetry Collector.

This is especially helpful for your current L1 and L2 teams who currently know and rely on AppDynamics. Dual ingest helps maintain context as the applications and services they are responsible become more connected to new services hosted in SaaS platforms in the cloud.

What You’ll Learn #

By the end of this workshop, you will:

• Build and run a simple Java service with the AppDynamics Java Agent
• Understand the difference between hybrid mode and dual signal mode
• Enable dual signal mode to send APM data to both AppDynamics and Splunk Observability Cloud
• Verify traces and metrics in both platforms
• Create a global data link in Splunk Observability Cloud for one-click navigation to AppDynamics

Architecture #

In this workshop you will run a Spring Boot Java application directly on your EC2 instance. The AppDynamics Java Agent attaches to the JVM process.

Phase 1: Normal AppD instrumentation:

Java App + AppD Agent  ──▶  AppD Controller

Phase 2: Dual signal mode enabled:

Java App + AppD Agent  ──▶  AppD Controller        (AppD protocol, unchanged)
                       ──▶  OTel Collector          (OTLP on localhost:4317)
                                 │
                                 ▼
                           Splunk Observability Cloud

The OpenTelemetry Collector runs on the same EC2 instance, receives OTLP from the agent, and exports traces and metrics to Splunk Observability Cloud.

Note: It is possible to send data directly from the agent to our OTLP ingest endpoint ↗ without a collector but you may lose some attributes and association taking part in your OTel config.

Hybrid Mode vs Dual Signal Mode #

The AppDynamics Java Agent supports two modes for emitting OpenTelemetry data.

Understanding the difference matters!

Hybrid Mode - Old and Dusty (GA, Java Agent 22.3+) #

• AppDynamics’ own instrumentation rules generate OTel-format spans
• The agent reuses its existing instrumentation to produce OTel data (outdated semantic version)
• Framework coverage limited to what AppDynamics instruments
• Enable with: -Dagent.deployment.mode=hybrid

Dual Signal Mode - New Hotness (Beta, Java Agent 25.6+) #

• The full OpenTelemetry Java auto-instrumentation ↗ runs alongside the AppD agent
• Two independent instrumentation engines operate in parallel
• Broader framework coverage anything the OTel Java agent supports
• Higher CPU and memory consumption
• Enable with: -Dagent.deployment.mode=dual or env var AGENT_DEPLOYMENT_MODE=dual

Why Dual Mode for This Workshop #

Dual signal mode adds correlation attributes to root spans that hybrid mode does not:

These attributes enable global data links clickable links on Splunk Observability Cloud traces that navigate directly to the corresponding AppDynamics view. Additionally, AppDynamics snapshots captured in dual mode include the OTel TraceId in the Data Collectors tab, enabling navigation in both directions.

Prerequisites #

Your workshop instance comes pre-configured with the tools you need:

You will also need: