Distributed Tracing

Latest Dynatrace

Distributed Tracing powered by Grail helps you get the most out of your trace data in Dynatrace. It enables the ingestion and processing of petabytes of trace data, allowing you to monitor and troubleshoot errors and performance issues in complex distributed software systems at scale. Trace data follows the Dynatrace trace-span data model, so the analysis of all related information and attributes is intuitive and can be done via the Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing app and Dynatrace Query Language (DQL). The trace data is stored in Grail, therefore you can leverage Grail's power to analyze even unknown unknowns.

The Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing app user-friendly interface is designed with engineers, SREs, and performance architects in mind, making it easy to visually analyze your trace data right away.

Use cases

Use Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing for:

  • Troubleshooting: Find out why requests fail and prevent future issues.

  • Performance optimization: Understand system performance and identify bottlenecks to improve reliability and user experience.

  • Detailed analysis: Look into individual trace details for deeper insights.

  • Exploratory analysis: Use free-form analysis to discover and explore unknown unknowns on the fly.

  • Discovering unknown unknowns: Be prepared for the unknown by using free-form analysis to explore and dissect data on the fly.

  • Synthesizing traces and monitoring signals: View trace data in context with other signal like logs, business events, or metrics.

Concepts

Learn the core concepts and terminology of distributed tracing in Dynatrace.

Ingest traces

Instrument your applications with OneAgent or OpenTelemetry to start ingesting trace data into Dynatrace.

Explore traces

Analyze your trace data in the Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing app.

Configure data access and storage

Manage permissions and data storage for Distributed Tracing powered by Grail.

Limits

Reference limits of the Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing app.

Tutorials

Advanced Tracing Analytics powered by Grail

Frequently asked questions

The new tracing experience is rolled out in stages to extend access to Dynatrace SaaS DPS customers until March 2025. The availability timing depends on the geographic region and the overall trace volume of your account. For more information, reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Yes. Once you start analyzing traces in the Distributed Tracing app, you can continue to use Distributed Traces Classic side by side.

DPS FullStack and/or Custom Traces Classic. No additional costs apply when you're using the new Distributed Tracing app.

Yes. Go to Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing and select Show facets > Reset to default.

Update to the latest version of OneAgent.

  • Make sure you have the latest version of OneAgent.
  • Make sure the OneAgent feature Forward Tag 4 trace context extension is on; this ensures OneAgent-captured traces are compatible with the W3C trace context standard.
  1. Go to Distributed Tracing Distributed Tracing.
  2. In the facet list, enter span source and select the source you're interested in.

Not yet.

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