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 dimensions.
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.
Attribute
Description
Custom host tags
dt.host_group.id
Note that difference between dt.entity.host_group and dt.host_group.id:
dt.host_group.id is a name of the host group. It's human-readable host group identifier, for example MyHostGroup.dt.entity.host_group is an identifier of host group entity in Dynatrace model. The identifier of the entity is not the same as the human readable identifier of the host group. It's created automatically and its format is for example HOST_GROUP-008786529C8EE446.For more information, see Organize your environment using host groups.
dt.entity.host
An entity ID of an entity of type HOST.
dt.entity.host_group
An entity ID of an entity of type HOST_GROUP.
dt.security_context
The security context is used to set up access permissions for monitored entities in Grail and needs to be configured. See Custom attributes
dt.cost.costcenter
The attribute is used to assign usage to a Cost Center and needs to be configured. See Custom attributes
dt.cost.product
The attribute is used to assign usage to a Product or Application ID and needs to be configured. See Custom attributes
host.name
The host name as determined depending on the data source, for example OneAgent, Extensions, or OpenTelemetry. Host name can be modified based on naming rules.
Note that this not an entity ID of an entity of type HOST (dt.entity.host).
Attribute
Description
dt.entity.ec2_instance
An entity ID of an entity of type EC2_INSTANCE.
dt.entity.aws_availability_zone
An entity ID of an entity of type AWS_AVAILABILITY_ZONE.
aws.availability_zone
A specific availability zone in given AWS region. For example, us‑east‑1a.
aws.region
A specific geographical AWS Cloud location. For example, us‑east‑1.
aws.resource.id
The unique identifier of the resource.
Attribute
Description
dt.entity.azure_vm
An entity ID of an entity of type AZURE_VM, retrieved from the instanceId field of Azure instance metadata.
dt.entity.azure_region
An entity ID of an entity of type AZURE_REGION.
azure.location
A specific geographical location of Azure Cloud resource, retrieved from the location field of Azure instance metadata.
azure.vmid
Azure Virtual Machine unique 128bits identifier.
Attribute
Description
gcp.instance.id
A permanent identifier that is unique within your Google Cloud project.
gcp.project.id
The identifier of the GCP project associated with this resource.
dt.entity.gcp_zone
An entity ID of an entity of type GCP_ZONE.
gcp.zone
A zone is a subset of a region. Each region has three or more zones. For example, europe-west3-c.
gcp.region
A region is a specific geographical location where you can host your resources. For example, europe-west3.
Attribute
Description
openstack.availability_zone
A specific availability zone in a given OpenStack region. For example, us-east-1a.
openstack.instance_uuid
UUID of an OpenStack instance.
Attribute
Description
k8s.cluster.uid
As the Kubernetes cluster name is not readily available, Dynatrace identifies the cluster by the UID of the kube-system namespace. Available only in Dynatrace Operator deployments.
k8s.node.name
A Kubernetes name of the Node. Available only in Dynatrace Operator deployments.
Attribute
Description
bosh.instance_id
A unique identifier assigned to each deployed BOSH instance.
bosh.availability_zone
A specific geographical BOSH location. For example, us-east-1a.
bosh.name
A unique identifier to a deployment or instance.
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.