May 2020 Summaries

The text discusses Dynatrace's enhancements to its web performance metrics with the release of version 1.194, highlighting the significance of the Visually Complete metric in measuring user experience. Visually Complete is emphasized as a critical metric because it measures the time users wait for content to load above the fold, providing a more accurate reflection of user experience than traditional load times. The update includes the introduction of new metrics such as First Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint, which are crucial for benchmarking and improving web performance. These metrics can be analyzed through Multidimensional and Waterfall analysis views, offering insights into performance issues across different dimensions like browsers and geolocations. Additionally, the update allows users more granular control over Visually Complete calculations, enabling them to customize elements like thresholds, timeouts, and excluded URLs for a more tailored performance analysis. The integration of these metrics is aimed at providing a comprehensive tool for real user monitoring and synthetic monitors, with further enhancements planned for future updates.

OneAgent version 1.193, released on May 29, 2020, introduces several new features, enhancements, and numerous resolved issues across various components. Notably, this release supports Mule (HTTP Listener) versions 4.1 to 4.9 and Huawei 8 in Java, and updates OpenSSL to version 1.1.1g to address a vulnerability. The release includes fixes for a range of issues, such as preventing crashes in Node.js applications on Cloud Foundry, correcting memory metrics in Azure standalone mode, and improving process availability reporting. Additionally, the update resolves various bugs in Java, .NET, PHP, and mainframe components, enhances resource handling and event measurement for OneAgent mobile applications, and addresses errors in JavaScript modules related to event handling and agent communication. Subsequent cumulative updates, including builds 170, 177, 180, and 201, further refine the release by resolving additional issues such as kernel crashes on AIX and improving the stability of various modules.

The blog provides a detailed, step-by-step guide on automating SRE-driven performance engineering using Dynatrace and Keptn, with a focus on leveraging Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) to enhance quality gates in the progressive delivery process. It outlines the process of monitoring test environments, deploying applications, tagging services, and integrating load testing tools to capture detailed test context data, which is then used for multidimensional analysis and performance insights. The guide emphasizes creating calculated service metrics and SLI-based performance dashboards to facilitate targeted diagnostics and comparisons between test runs, ultimately automating SLI validation through Keptn for improved regression detection and SLO compliance. Additionally, it introduces Dynatrace's ACE Services as a resource for organizations seeking to implement automated quality gates and shift-left practices into their CI/CD workflows.

Dynatrace has expanded its OneAgent support, now accommodating PHP on Docker containers using Alpine Linux (musl-libc), ASP.NET Core 2.1, and .NET Core 2.1, while also enhancing detection of Cloud Foundry Gorouter processes and IBM Integration Bus (IIB) processes. The company has introduced a Technology support and interoperability matrix to assist users with compatibility details and improved OneAgent integration for OpenShift Online and Kubernetes application containers. Network connections for containers using container network mode are now reported, which necessitates support from OneAgent for effective monitoring. Additionally, the release includes support for Docker 17.x, new AIX high memory event types, and bug fixes focused on installation, data collection, and OneAgent updates. The Security Gateway team is advancing development on Azure and OpenStack monitoring and its auto-update feature, though these are not yet publicly available. Moreover, the Real User Monitoring feature will see the deprecation of the JavaScript API windows.ruxitApi, to be replaced with window.dtrum in the upcoming OneAgent v1.147.

Dynatrace has introduced new features to enhance dashboard management, providing users with greater control and flexibility over their dashboards through advanced tools such as a JSON editor and improved filtering capabilities. These updates aim to simplify the process of overseeing multiple dashboards in complex IT ecosystems by allowing users to customize the underlying JSON schema, segment dashboards using tags, and mark favorites for easier access. The Dynatrace Davis® AI causation engine remains a key feature for automated monitoring, alerting users to issues without the need for manual dashboard checks. The new features include rich filter options to efficiently manage and locate dashboards based on various criteria, while the JSON editor enables real-time modifications and automation of dashboard configurations. Looking ahead, Dynatrace plans to further enhance its dashboard offerings by introducing templates for simplified monitoring and reporting, as well as improved charting capabilities and additional filtering options.

Dynatrace's latest release introduces the ability to define maintenance windows through both its API and web interface, allowing organizations to manage their systems effectively even in environments that strive for constant availability. The platform distinguishes between planned and unplanned maintenance windows, which can be configured to ensure accurate monitoring by excluding these periods from baseline calculations and preventing monitoring anomalies during updates or load tests. Users can set maintenance schedules, define the scope of affected components, and choose how problems are detected and reported during these windows. This functionality is accessible through the Dynatrace UI or the REST API, which is favored by DevOps teams for automation. The maintenance window feature helps maintain clean baselines, reduces unnecessary alerts, and ensures that service-level agreements (SLAs) are not impacted by planned downtimes. Future updates will further enhance this feature by excluding planned maintenance windows from SLA reports.

Dynatrace's latest release introduces alerting profiles to enhance problem notification management, replacing the older, cumbersome watch settings. These profiles allow users to create detailed alert-filtering rules based on severity, customer impact, tags, and problem duration, offering precise control over notifications in large environments. This is applicable across all alerting channels, including the Dynatrace mobile app, web UI, and third-party integrations such as Slack, HipChat, and PagerDuty. Each environment has a default alerting profile, which can be customized or replaced by new profiles tailored to specific teams or integration needs. The transition from watch settings to alerting profiles requires manual migration, as existing settings cannot be automatically transferred, but newly created environments have alerting profiles enabled by default. This change aims to improve the filtering and routing of problem notifications by using customizable rules to ensure timely and relevant alerts.

Dynatrace Managed version 1.194 introduces several enhancements and resolved issues to optimize performance and user experience, particularly in hybrid mainframe environments and web performance metrics. The release includes new self-monitoring dashboards and updates to the Cluster Management Console, such as support for HTTPS proxy servers and configurable user actions limits. Notable improvements involve enhanced "Visually Complete" metrics for web performance, optimization of code-level analysis, and refined error messaging in APIs. The release also resolves issues related to ActiveGate, cluster management, and session replay playback performance. Cumulative updates address various bugs, including those affecting Kubernetes event monitoring, EC2 metrics, and OpenID Connect authentication, with specific fixes to improve system reliability and efficiency.

Third-party APIs are crucial to software systems, and their performance can significantly impact user experience, necessitating robust monitoring similar to that applied to internal code and platforms. Using tools like Dynatrace Real User Monitoring (RUM), organizations can effectively track the performance and impact of these APIs, as demonstrated in a case involving a financial sector customer who used Dynatrace to monitor a self-service portal for insurance agents. By configuring Dynatrace to monitor both internal and external access points of the portal, the team identified a spike in HTTP 500 errors linked to an internal third-party API managed by a different team, which was affecting both internal and external users. This proactive monitoring allowed the team to address the issue before it led to widespread user complaints or support calls, highlighting the value of real-time alerts and insights in maintaining software reliability. Additionally, Dynatrace offers integrations with tools like Slack and Jira for automated problem notifications, further enhancing its utility in managing API-related issues.

The text discusses the integration of web analytics tools, such as Adobe Analytics, with Dynatrace to enhance collaboration between IT and business teams. This integration aims to bridge the gap between understanding business metrics and application performance by establishing a common language, allowing teams to address issues such as shopping cart abandonment caused by slow web pages. The introduction of property packs simplifies the process, enabling real-time insights and facilitating better decision-making by linking performance data with user behavior metrics. The integration supports a seamless connection between various tools, providing actionable insights through a unified platform, which is beneficial for refining products and strategies. Additionally, the text mentions future expansions to include more analytics and personalization tools, encouraging community suggestions for further development.

Dynatrace's enhanced user action naming in Real User Monitoring streamlines the process of naming automatically detected user actions by introducing placeholders, delimiters, and API support, allowing for dynamic and flexible naming conventions. This enhancement enables businesses to better analyze customer interactions with their websites or applications, providing insights into consumer behavior. The new features allow for efficient grouping and analysis of user actions relevant to business success, despite the challenges posed by increasingly dynamic web applications. With placeholders, users can introduce dynamic information into action names, simplifying the creation of naming rules, and reducing the number needed. Delimiters help extract or replace information from data sources, and API support enables configuration through REST endpoints. The transition to this enhanced system is facilitated by providing users with both the existing and new versions, allowing for a gradual migration of rules before the older version is phased out. Dynatrace offers support and resources, including a preview feature for testing new rules, to aid businesses in adapting to these changes by the deadline of October 31, 2020.