June 2020 Summaries

The webinar hosted by Dynatrace and avodaq provides insights into optimizing IT Service Operations using the Dynatrace Software Intelligence platform, focusing on four key areas: monitoring SLAs with Dynatrace Synthetic, ensuring user experience with Dynatrace Real User Monitoring (RUM), automating operational tasks through Dynatrace AIOps, and extending monitoring capabilities beyond the Dynatrace OneAgent. The event features live demonstrations by Stephan Dannewitz, a DevOps Engineer at avodaq, who illustrates how Dynatrace tools can enhance the monitoring and automation of business-critical applications, streamline problem resolution through detailed root cause analysis, and integrate with various incident management systems like AWS Lambda and ServiceNow. The session emphasizes the flexibility and breadth of Dynatrace's monitoring capabilities, including its applicability to diverse environments such as on-premise infrastructure, cloud-native platforms, and scenarios where OneAgent cannot be deployed. The webinar is available in both English and German, offering valuable guidance for organizations looking to modernize their IT operations and delivery processes.

The Dynatrace OneAgent 1.195 release, initiated on June 29, 2020, introduces new features and resolves various issues across multiple components while setting future support changes for certain technologies and operating systems. This version adds support for Node.js 14 and includes enhancements for z/OS, such as improved host metrics monitoring and CICS code module support for CTS 5.6. It also discontinues connections of OneAgent components on z/OS to AppMon Collector/Server. Several resolved issues span across components like the AI causation engine, Node.js, Java, .NET, and logging modules, improving stability and functionality. The release notes outline future technology support changes, indicating that versions 1.209 and 1.213 will be the last to support certain versions of OpenTelemetry for Go, and detail upcoming operating systems that will no longer be supported, such as Amazon Linux 2 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Additionally, the update addresses specific technical challenges, including kernel crashes on AIX, Node.js RUM injection issues, and handling of unsupported RabbitMQ versions in .NET, while also improving features for mobile OneAgent, particularly for Android.

Dynatrace has introduced a new set of fully integrated, worldwide, multi-cloud, and high-availability public locations for HTTP monitoring as part of its Digital Experience Monitoring. This development allows users to detect regional issues and ensure applications meet service level agreements by providing a comprehensive outside-in view of application performance from various global locations. The HTTP monitors can be created directly via the Dynatrace web UI or API, removing the necessity for private deployments. These monitors offer unique features such as full integration with the Dynatrace platform, enabling the comparison of synthetic and real traffic, automated SLA/SLO monitoring, and execution of complex transactions via scripting. The monitors support various authentication methods and are designed to handle all endpoints, including APIs and microservices, with capabilities for pre- and post-execution scripting. Dynatrace plans to enhance this offering further by expanding public locations and improving access to execution details to better serve its users' monitoring needs.

Dynatrace has introduced Premium High Availability (Premium HA) for its Managed service, enhancing its existing high availability capabilities by providing geographic redundancy and automatic failover solutions for globally distributed enterprises. This advancement allows Dynatrace Managed to continue operating even if an entire data center fails, achieving near-zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). The Premium HA solution is designed as a self-contained, turnkey system that eliminates the need for external load balancing or replication technologies, optimizing hardware utilization through an active-active deployment model and reducing operational costs. It supports installations with over 1,000 host units and requires additional licensing, with plans for continuous improvements and enhanced features in future releases.

Dynatrace has released the improved Monitored entities REST API v2, designed to enhance automation in complex IT environments by integrating Dynatrace context information into third-party workflows. This API aims to simplify the automation of business-critical processes like deployment pipelines and cloud migration projects by providing a single endpoint to access a variety of entity types such as hosts, services, and applications. With features like consistent pagination, control over payloads, and a unified navigation URL for entity redirection, the API facilitates the management of complex IT systems by enabling efficient data integration and retrieval. Dynatrace's patented Smartscape technology further aids in visualizing IT services and their interdependencies, offering real-time performance insights crucial for operational teams.

As application and cloud environments grow more complex, ITOps and DevOps teams increasingly rely on AIOps solutions like Dynatrace to automatically monitor, analyze, and report data. Dynatrace has been ranked as the leading AIOps vendor by G2, with its platform offering a comprehensive approach that includes application performance monitoring, container monitoring, and digital experience monitoring, among others. Unlike niche AIOps tools that require configuration of disparate data sources, Dynatrace provides a full-stack, all-in-one solution that collects and analyzes data through a single agent-based deployment, producing precise and actionable insights. Despite initially not being classified under the AIOps category, Dynatrace's capabilities align closely with AIOps criteria, offering features such as automatic monitoring, performance baselining, and root cause analysis. The platform's AI engine, Davis, is highlighted for its ability to deliver domain-specific intelligence and enriched data collection, setting Dynatrace apart from its competitors and reinforcing its position as a leader in multiple software categories on G2.

Dynatrace provides comprehensive end-to-end transaction visibility and proven code-level analysis from cloud to mainframe, significantly enhancing enterprises' ability to eliminate inefficiencies and accelerate innovation. Its software intelligence platform automatically discovers and maps transactions in real-time, offering a competitive edge by addressing monitoring blind spots that can lead to costly inefficiencies, especially within mainframe environments like IBM Z used by many Fortune 500 companies. The latest Dynatrace release, version 1.194, introduces CPU-related infrastructure metrics for IBM Z systems, including LPARs and regions, and expands multidimensional analysis to include CICS, IMS, and the CICS transaction gateway. This allows enterprises to optimize their IBM Z configurations by identifying workloads that can be migrated to less expensive zIIPs, thereby reducing costs associated with license fees and maintenance. Additionally, Dynatrace's AI-powered platform supports anomaly detection and root-cause analysis, facilitating proactive performance management and cost savings. The integration of these metrics into business processes is simplified through the Dynatrace API, and the installation and maintenance of OneAgent on z/OS have been streamlined with new updates.

Mobile apps have become integral to daily life, setting high expectations for speed, convenience, and personalization, but app crashes can disrupt user experience and business retention. Dynatrace Real User Monitoring offers comprehensive insights into user journeys and crash reporting, utilizing Dynatrace OneAgent for Mobile to capture and analyze crashes by sending stack traces for evaluation. The updated crash analysis workflow in Dynatrace 1.191 enhances the ability to identify crash impacts, affected user groups, and root causes, even in complex client/server setups, using PurePath technology for full visibility from user actions to server-side issues. The platform enables proactive anomaly detection and crash analysis through a dedicated dashboard, grouping crashes by stack trace similarity and occurrence, and provides detailed views of crash impacts across app versions, OS versions, and devices. Additionally, symbol files can be uploaded for faster analysis, ensuring clear method names in stack traces. Upcoming improvements aim to further enhance crash analysis efficiency and user behavior insights, with Dynatrace inviting feedback from its community for continuous enhancement.

PHP remains a highly popular programming language used for a variety of applications, including web development, microservices, and automated task scheduling, with prominent examples being WordPress and Magento. Dynatrace has enhanced its capabilities by introducing AI-powered PHP CLI monitoring in OneAgent version 1.181, building on PHP NG monitoring available since version 1.179. This new feature allows developers to analyze performance, identify code bottlenecks, and gain insights into database interactions and memory management. The monitoring supports all Dynatrace-supported PHP versions, offering features such as ambient sampling, method hotspots, and deep monitoring through custom service detection. Despite some limitations like overhead upon process startup and unsupported forking within PHP CLI processes, Dynatrace is working to address these issues while seeking user feedback to refine their offering.

Marketing campaigns often fail due to a lack of collaboration between marketing and IT teams, as seen in a recent example involving a Dynatrace customer. Despite a significant increase in user sessions following a campaign launch, key performance indicators like conversion rates and user engagement showed a negative impact, primarily because of errors on the campaign landing page that were not detected by the marketing team. These issues could have been addressed had the marketing and IT teams worked together from the start, leveraging tools like Dynatrace and adopting BizDevOps practices to break down silos and share insights. By integrating IT operations with marketing efforts, teams can avoid costly errors, optimize campaign performance, and ultimately achieve better outcomes, as demonstrated by the improved collaboration facilitated by Dynatrace's Business Observability platform.

Dynatrace, a software intelligence platform, enhances its Managed service by offering self-monitoring dashboards to all customers, a feature previously exclusive to Dynatrace ONE Premium users. These dashboards provide vital insights into cluster health, covering metrics such as CPU usage, network latency, and self-healing requirements, which are crucial for maintaining the high reliability and scalability expected of a tier-0 application. By keeping data and analysis on-premise, Dynatrace Managed ensures compliance with privacy and regulatory standards while allowing customers to better plan their network, storage, and compute power needs. The recent release aims to provide a SaaS-like experience, enabling customers to proactively manage their infrastructure through detailed visualization of load patterns and capacity. Although the preview program for these dashboards has closed, Dynatrace continues to seek customer feedback to improve its offerings further.

The Dynatrace Managed release version 1.196 introduces several new features and enhancements, including cross-environment dashboards for large-scale reporting and improved SLA and SLO reporting through new public synthetic HTTP monitors. The update also highlights the availability of Premium High Availability for globally distributed data centers, ensuring reliability by storing multiple copies of events and metrics across cluster nodes. Additionally, the release improves automation capabilities through the updated Monitored entities REST API v2, enabling integration with third-party systems for processes like deployment and cloud migration. Other enhancements include optimized disk space utilization for installation packages, updated SSL storage formats, and an easier deployment of HTTPS proxy certificates. The release resolves 52 issues, including improvements in ActiveGate reporting, custom chart display, user interface functionality, and user authentication processes, alongside various updates to the Cluster Management Console, infrastructure components, and synthetic monitoring.