The node activity settings are account level settings that the root Splunk AppDynamics administrator for on-prem customers can modify from the Administration Console. For SaaS customers, you will need to contact customer support to change the node activity settings.

• node.permanent.deletion.period: Time (in hours) after which a node that has lost contact with the Controller is deleted permanently from the system. The data is removed. If the agent starts reporting again after this period, it will start like a new node. Therefore, no historical data will be available at the node level. You will see historical data at the tier and app level, and cluster roll up will take place as normal.The default is 720 hours, the minimum value is 6 hours, and the maximum value for this setting is unlimited.

• node.retention.period: Time (in hours) after which a node that has lost contact with the Controller is deleted. In this case, the Controller UI will not display the node, however, the system will continue to retain it.If the agent starts reporting again within these hours, it will reappear in the UI and the counter will reset. The data is persisted.

  Note: When entity liveness is enabled in the Administration Console, the historical nodes are displayed in the Controller UI even when the node is deleted (exceeds node.retention.period). However, if the nodes are permanently deleted (exceeds node.permanent.deletion.period), the Controller UI will not display the node even when entity liveness is enabled.

  The default is 500 hours, the minimum value is 1 hour, and the maximum value for this setting is unlimited.Additional notes about the node retention period:

  • A node will be impacted by the node retention period even if a Machine Agent is associated with that node. If a Machine Agent associated with the App Server Agent is running, the node retention period will still be in effect.

  • You can have any number of Machine Agents running in background that will never appear in the Controller unless the Machine Agent:

    • runs on a host machine that has been shut down or cannot connect to the Controller.

    • is not instrumented or has been uninstalled.

    • has been stopped.

  • If you need a node to be considered for the node retention period, it should be marked as historical on shutdown:

    ‑Dappdynamics.jvm.shutdown.mark.node.as.historical=