You can configure Splunk AppDynamics to reuse node names for dynamic environments. With node name reuse enabled, after a node is shut down and marked as historical in Splunk AppDynamics, the name of the node becomes available for reuse in subsequently registered nodes. You can also specify a node name prefix when reusing node names to indicate the association between all concurrently running JVMs for the dynamic application.

To configure the agent for this environment, use these properties:

• Reuse Node Name Property- To enable re-use of node names.
• Auto Node Name Prefix Property- To set the prefix used for automatically-named nodes.

When enabled, the Controller manages name assignments for the agents. It forms node names by appending a sequentially incremented number as the suffix to the prefix you specify. Be sure to avoid specifying the node name using any other mechanism (such as in controller-info.xml file or through a system property).

This listing shows sample settings for the properties as they may appear in a startup script:

-Dappdynamics.agent.reuse.nodeName=true
-Dappdynamics.agent.reuse.nodeName.prefix=CloudActivator_

When you have enabled reuse node name, the Java Agent logs to standard output after starting up and before registration with the Controller. To troubleshoot agent registration failure, you may want to write the log files to a file instead.

<!-- To log files to an "unknown" folder before the agent registers
with the Controller, uncomment the line below -->
<appender-ref ref="AgentLogAppender"/>

This change causes the log files of an agent prior to registration to be written to a directory named "unknown" rather than standard output.