Overview
Dynatrace provides a unified software intelligence platform for observability and application security across cloud-native and hybrid environments. The platform is engineered to offer full-stack visibility, encompassing application performance, infrastructure health, user experience, and underlying security posture. It is particularly suited for large enterprises managing complex, distributed systems across multiple cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure.
A core component of Dynatrace is its AI engine, Davis, which aims to provide automated root cause analysis and anomaly detection. This automation is intended to reduce manual effort in identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks and security vulnerabilities. Dynatrace's OneAgent technology automatically discovers and instruments applications and infrastructure components, collecting metrics, logs, traces, and user behavior data without requiring extensive manual configuration in many cases. This approach is designed to simplify deployment and ensure comprehensive data collection from various technologies and programming languages, including Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, and Go Dynatrace API documentation.
The platform supports key use cases for DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams by integrating monitoring, AIOps, and automation capabilities. This enables teams to observe system behavior, understand dependencies, and automate responses to operational issues. For example, it can automatically detect performance regressions after a deployment and provide context for rollbacks or further investigation. Dynatrace also extends its capabilities into application security, offering real-time vulnerability detection and runtime application self-protection (RASP) features, aiming to manage the security posture of applications in production environments.
Dynatrace's architecture is designed for scalability and aims to handle large volumes of telemetry data from diverse sources. Its focus on automation, from deployment of agents to AI-driven insights, positions it for organizations seeking to streamline operations and improve the reliability and security of their digital services. This comprehensive approach differentiates it from more specialized monitoring tools, offering a consolidated view of IT operations Gartner Magic Quadrant for APM and Observability.
Key features
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Provides deep code-level visibility, transaction tracing, and dependency mapping for applications across all environments.
- Infrastructure Monitoring: Monitors the health and performance of servers, containers, virtual machines, and cloud services, including CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O.
- Log Management and Analytics: Ingests, stores, and analyzes logs from all monitored components, correlating them with metrics and traces for contextualized troubleshooting.
- Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Offers real user monitoring (RUM) and synthetic monitoring to track user experience, application availability, and performance from an end-user perspective.
- Application Security: Detects and blocks runtime vulnerabilities (e.g., OWASP Top 10) within applications, providing real-time protection and security posture management.
- Cloud Automation: Automates operational tasks and responses based on observed data and AI-driven insights, supporting GitOps and FinOps practices.
- AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis (Davis): Utilizes AI and machine learning to automatically identify the root cause of performance problems and anomalies across the stack.
- OneAgent: A single agent for automatic discovery and instrumentation of applications, services, and infrastructure components across various technologies.
Pricing
Dynatrace offers custom enterprise pricing based on specific usage and requirements. The pricing model is typically based on factors such as host units, Davis data units (DDUs) for metrics, logs, and traces, and user sessions for Digital Experience Monitoring.
| Product Component | Pricing Metric | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Full-Stack Monitoring | Host Units | Based on the number and size of monitored hosts/servers. |
| Log Management & Analytics | Davis Data Units (DDUs) | Consumption-based for log ingestion and analysis. |
| Metrics & Traces | Davis Data Units (DDUs) | Consumption-based for metrics and distributed traces. |
| Digital Experience Monitoring | User Sessions / Synthetic Monitors | Based on the volume of real user sessions or synthetic tests. |
| Application Security | Host Units / Data Units | Pricing varies based on the scope of protection. |
For detailed pricing information and to obtain a custom quote, organizations can contact Dynatrace directly. A 15-day free trial is available to evaluate the platform's capabilities Dynatrace Pricing Page.
Common integrations
- Cloud Platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Dynatrace Cloud Platform Monitoring
- Container & Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift Dynatrace Container Monitoring
- CI/CD & DevOps Tools: Jenkins, GitLab, Jira, ServiceNow Dynatrace Integrations Overview
- Alerting & Notification: Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps Dynatrace Problem Notifications
- Observability & Analytics: Splunk, Grafana (via OpenTelemetry) Dynatrace Open Standards Support
Alternatives
- Datadog: A SaaS-based monitoring and analytics platform that provides full-stack observability, security, and developer experience.
- New Relic: An observability platform offering APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, and digital experience monitoring with a focus on developer experience.
- Honeycomb: A platform for debugging and understanding production systems, emphasizing high-cardinality data and interactive querying for distributed tracing.
- Grafana Labs: Offers open-source and enterprise solutions for observability, including Grafana for visualization, Loki for logs, and Prometheus for metrics.
- Splunk: A data platform for security, observability, and operations, providing capabilities for log management, SIEM, and APM.
Getting started
To begin monitoring an application with Dynatrace, the OneAgent needs to be deployed to the host where your application runs. This example demonstrates a basic setup for a Java application using the OneAgent installer. For other languages or environments, the specific steps for OneAgent deployment will vary, but the principle of automatic instrumentation remains consistent Dynatrace OneAgent Installation Guide.
Step 1: Download and install OneAgent
First, obtain the OneAgent installer from your Dynatrace environment. The following command is illustrative for a Linux system:
wget -O Dynatrace-OneAgent-Linux.sh "https://<your-environment-id>.live.dynatrace.com/api/v1/deployment/installer/agent/unix/default/latest?arch=x86&flavor=default"
sudo /bin/sh Dynatrace-OneAgent-Linux.sh
Replace <your-environment-id> with your actual Dynatrace environment ID.
Step 2: Restart your application
After installing OneAgent, restart your Java application. OneAgent automatically injects itself into the application process and begins collecting data.
# Example: Restarting a sample Java application service
sudo systemctl restart my-java-app.service
Step 3: Verify data collection in Dynatrace
Log in to your Dynatrace environment. Navigate to the "Smartscape" topology map or the "Applications" section to see your application and its services. You should observe metrics, traces, and logs flowing into the Dynatrace platform, indicating successful instrumentation.
For custom instrumentation or scenarios where automatic injection is insufficient, Dynatrace provides SDKs and an extensive API for data extraction and configuration Dynatrace API Reference.