November 2018 Summaries

Dynatrace provides integrated synthetic monitoring capabilities that allow users to monitor application availability and business-critical workflows globally using real browsers, and easily monitor APIs with HTTP monitors. Besides its built-in features, Dynatrace supports integration with external synthetic monitoring solutions through an API, enabling users to push external synthetic test results into the platform. This integration allows for comprehensive data analysis in one location, correlating synthetic data with real user data to identify problems. Users can send various types of data, including test results and events, and link external data to Dynatrace applications. To utilize this feature, users must generate an API token with appropriate access, and can begin integration with available tools like a Python example on GitHub. External synthetic data appears alongside Dynatrace monitors and can be tagged for easy identification. As of May 2020, this service is billed via DEM units, and Dynatrace welcomes feedback and partnership inquiries.

The text explores the concept of "Shift-Left" in the context of modern software development and performance engineering, highlighting how a company in the financial sector has adopted a cloud-native architecture with AWS to enhance their delivery pipeline and feedback mechanisms. By implementing continuous performance testing and monitoring with tools like Dynatrace, the company has integrated automated performance feedback into each build deployment, allowing for quicker identification and resolution of issues such as resource consumption and scalability impacts. Dynatrace provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities, including container management, automatic anomaly detection, and integration with AWS CloudWatch for enriched data insights. The text discusses the benefits of using Dynatrace, such as its AI-driven anomaly detection, which helps teams proactively address infrastructure and application issues, reducing the time spent on manual analysis. It also highlights how Dynatrace's tagging and alerting features facilitate faster feedback loops by notifying responsible teams of detected issues in real-time, improving overall efficiency and collaboration. Additionally, the text suggests further potential uses of Dynatrace, including automating sanity checks and deployment optimizations through its REST API, integrating it more deeply into CI/CD pipelines, and exploring self-healing use cases for enhanced system reliability.

Dynatrace automatically manages problem detection and resolution by identifying when a component recovers and closing the issue with a resolved status, but now it allows for manual closure of problems with a textual comment explaining the reason. This manual intervention is particularly useful in cases where no remediation is necessary, such as when a host is no longer in use, allowing operators to close problems and preserve the closing reason in the comment feed for future reference. The comment feed provides a detailed record of who closed the problem, when, and why, and can be integrated with tools like Jira to streamline the remediation workflow. By enabling manual closure, Dynatrace empowers Ops teams to efficiently manage issues that are acknowledged and pending recovery, enhancing operational flexibility and record-keeping.

Dynatrace has announced the availability of remote monitoring for DataPower gateways through its DataPower ActiveGate extension, addressing the challenge of monitoring security-related technologies that are inhospitable to agent-based approaches. This extension allows for the ingestion and analysis of crucial data every 60 seconds, providing real-time insights into the performance and health of DataPower devices, including service availability, network throughput, and CPU load. The platform offers visualization tools, dashboards, and reports to help users understand device performance and the inter-dependencies within complex enterprise environments. Additionally, upcoming updates to Dynatrace's AI engine, Davis®, will enhance root-cause analysis by incorporating data from the ActiveGate extension, enabling insights into customer and service-impacting issues related to DataPower instances. The extension is easy to deploy and supported by Dynatrace, ensuring that users receive the best-in-class functionality.