All monitoring artifacts that leave a given host, that is have the host as its resource, are enriched with the host-level resource attributes.
Host-level resource attributes are resource attributes of monitored hosts. All events raised by and measurements coming from OneAgent components running on a given host are enriched with those attributes. You can then use them in your queries to structure and filter the monitoring data.
You can also use some of the attributes to create policies to manage data access. See Global field reference and search for fields tagged as Permission
If you have access to a host with OneAgent installed, you can inspect the dt_host_metadata.json and dt_host_metadata.properties to see the scope of resource attributes enrichment provided by OneAgent. For more information, see Enrich ingested data with Dynatrace-specific fields.
You can create your own attributes by configuring key-value tags and properties set via oneagentctl or through Remote configuration management of OneAgents and ActiveGates. Custom tags and properties defined this way are reported as flat, first-level resource attributes.
The key tags with no value are ignored.
Tags assigned through automated rules, environment variables, and Topology and Smartscape API are not included.
As the keys depend on your configuration, they aren't covered by Semantic Dictionary.
Tag names can't be prefixed with dt. except for the following tags that are subject to your configuration:
dt.security_context - attribute to manage data access using policies. See Grant access to entities with security context.dt.cost.costcenter - attribute to assign usage to a Cost Center. See Allocate your DPS costs.dt.cost.product - attribute to assign usage to a Product or Application ID. See Allocate your DPS costs.Attributes coming from custom properties and tags don't override the built-in enrichments if they have the same name. When creating your custom properties and tags, check Global field reference to make sure your name isn't already used.
Host-level resource attributes can be imported from host custom properties and tags. The hostcustomproperties.conf and hostautotag.conf files are the sources for these attributes. If they follow the key=value pattern, the same keys can exist in both files but with different values. When merged, the content from hostautotag.conf takes priority over the content from hostcustomproperties.conf, as tags take priority in case of a name clash.
If a name clash happens when merging resource attributes at different levels, the lowest level takes priority.
All host-level resource attributes follow Semantic Dictionary, unless stated otherwise.
To ensure consistent and reliable metric ingestion, resource attributes normalization is applied to all relevant internal metric keys and values. This process helps prevent metrics from being dropped due to invalid or malformed dimensions.
| Rule description | Details |
|---|---|
| Invalid Characters | An invalid character or a series of invalid characters is replaced with one underscore _. For example, zaó$%ć is replaced with za_. |
| Empty Keys | Dimensions with no valid characters are skipped |
| Key Length Limit | OneAgent version 1.317+ Max. 350 characters (previously max. 100 characters) |
| Rule description | Details |
|---|---|
| Allowed Characters | All non-control characters (ASCII & Unicode) |
| Control Characters | Not allowed. A control character (that is a character used as an instruction and is not displayed; for example, line break, tab) or a series of those characters is replaced with one underscore _. |
| Value Length Limit | OneAgent version 1.313+ Max. 2048 characters (previously max. 255 characters) |
| Quoted Values | If value starts and ends with ", it is escaped |
To align with the current specification, a specific dimension hierarchy and defined limits are used to prevent warnings and metric drops caused by exceeding those limits.
By default, the global dimension limit is equal to 100 and the customer-defined dimension limit is 40% of the global limit.