KB-1859 Appian Cloud: metrics and monitoring

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Metric Types

Appian Cloud systems are implemented to monitor key operational metrics and to notify appropriate personnel when certain operational thresholds are reached. To help prevent and mitigate threats, the monitoring of these key operational metrics is automated. This monitoring includes but is not limited to the following:

  • Storage space availability
  • Memory utilization
  • Login page availability
  • Production VPN tunnel status
  • Appian Engine status
  • Anti-virus alerts

Appian Cloud authorized personnel receive notifications from the automated monitoring application and remediate items if necessary. This process is tracked in the Appian Cloud Administrative interface.

In addition to operational metrics, Appian Cloud management monitors all privileged access to Appian Cloud each business day. During the process, reviews are conducted over potentially inappropriate access and/or unusual actions. Appian reviews log files whenever the monitoring systems report a problem for a particular Appian Cloud site or whenever Appian staff members or customers identify and confirm suspicious activities on the system. Appian notifies customers about any confirmed issues via the online product support case management system.

Alert Priority

Appian Cloud monitoring and alerting infrastructure utilizes alert priority and alert type to systematically and continuously provide updated system metrics to Appian support engineers.

Alert priority considers how quickly the alert notifies the Appian Cloud operations team, for example:

  1. Immediate
  2. Delayed - notified after 20 minutes

Alert type considers the classification of the alert, for example:

  1. Error
  2. Warning
  3. Informational

This alert classification system allows Appian Cloud engineers to see system health trends and perform analysis for alerts associated with a pattern, for example.

Alerts - Detailed

Appian collects several metrics across the Appian Cloud infrastructure.  These metrics are collected and, monitored by Appian automated systems. Key operational metrics, identified above, are reported to Appian for triage and analysis. If thresholds reach a certain level of criticality, standard operating procedures are utilized to notify customers via the Appian case management system. Appian reserves the right to adjust any of the thresholds utilized for monitoring as considered appropriate to meet our service level agreement. Below are some of the Appian Cloud operational metrics collected and monitored:

  • Server performance
    • Disk Usage (>80%, >90%, >95%)
    • Memory Use (>80%, >90%)
    • Load metrics
    • Engine CPU Usage
  • Application server
    • Heap usage
    • Application server response times over 3 seconds greater than 60% of requests
  • Database
    • DB connection pool
    • DB replication error
    • Database Cluster health
  • External system connectivity
    • Production VPN tunnel is down
  • Platform components
    • Hardware is unavailable
    • Web server is unavailable
    • Application Server is unreachable
    • Appian Engines availability
    • Login page failed to load
    • Data-server health
    • Search-server health
    • Database status
    • RPA
    • Filesystem health
  • Appian Cloud infrastructure monitoring
    • System audit sensors
    • Logging facilities
    • Security infrastructure
    • Amazon AMI related alerts
    • SSL certificates

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian Cloud.

Last Reviewed: April 2023

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