Extend metric observability

You can extend the data collected out of the box with data provided by the following frameworks and standards:

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry

Send OpenTelemetry metrics to Dynatrace

Micrometer

Micrometer

Collect Micrometer metrics from JVM applications

Prometheus

Prometheus

Send Prometheus metrics to Dynatrace

StatsD

StatsD

Send StatsD metrics to Dynatrace

Telegraf

Telegraf

Send Telegraf metrics to Dynatrace

Oracle Database

Extend your application observability into data acquired directly from your Oracle Database layer.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server Database

Extend your application observability into data acquired directly from your Microsoft SQL Server layer.

SNMP

SNMP

Learn how to monitor your network devices using SNMP.

WMI

WMI

Learn how to monitor your devices exposing Windows Management Instrumentation using WMI.

JMX

JMX

Extend observability of your Java applications with JMX metrics.

Scripting integration

Extend metric observability via Dynatrace' scripting integration.

Metric ingestion API

Extend metric observability via Dynatrace's open Metric APIs.

Access ingested metrics

You can access your ingested metrics via the Metric API v2 and in Data Explorer for custom charting.

Metrics API

Use the GET metric data points call of the Metrics API v2 to retrieve ingested data points.

Data Explorer

Select Create custom chart and then select Try it out in the top banner. For more information, see Data Explorer.

You can search the metric keys of all available metrics, select the metrics you want to chart, define how you’d like to analyze and chart them, and then pin your charts to a dashboard.

Events

The custom metric ingest channel allows for ingestion of all types of metric measurements, regardless of the number of entities they relate to. The way an event is raised depends on whether there's no entity, a single entity, or multiple entities assigned to a custom metric. For more information, see Topology awareness.

Metric alerts

You can also create custom alerts based on the ingested metrics. Go to Settings > Anomaly detection > Metric events and select Add metric event. In the Add metric event page, search for a metric using its key and define your alert. For more information, see Metric events for alerting.

Custom metric ingestion affects your DDU consumption

Only limited custom metric ingestion and analysis is included in out-of-the-box Dynatrace technology support. Custom metrics typically consume Davis data units, but custom metrics from OneAgent-monitored hosts are first deducted from your quota of included metrics per host unit, so they won't necessarily consume DDUs. This applies to metrics that are assigned to a host either automatically or by adding the dt.entity.host dimension.

For details, see DDUs for custom metrics.

  • Each ingested metric that is subject to DDU consumption (in other words, not assigned to a host) generates one or more metric data points. These data points consume DDUs with a weight of 0.001. Therefore, a simple metric reported once each minute for a full year will consume 526 DDUs (525,600 minutes × 0.001 ≈ 526 DDUs).

  • To check the DDU consumption of an environment, go to Account Management > License / Subscription > Overview.

Metric dimensions also affect DDU Consumption

There are two additional factors to consider in determining which ingested metrics will consume DDUs and when:

  • Tuples: Unique combinations of metric-dimension pairs (see examples below).
    • Metrics classic Each environment can support a maximum of 50,000,000 unique tuples monthly.
    • Metrics powered by Grail Each tuple counts toward your environment's cardinality limit.
  • Timeframe: When the same metric is ingested with unique dimension tuples within a 1-minute timeframe, each additional tuple results in the consumption of another metric data point.

Examples

For the following examples, assume that all metrics are ingested once per minute.

  • In this first example, the same distinct dimension tuple is reported twice within a one-minute interval. Therefore, only one (aggregated) data point is consumed (1 data point × 0.001 DDUs). 
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu1,cpu_type="INTEL" 55
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu1,cpu_type="INTEL" 75
  • Here two distinct dimension pairs are reported within a 1-minute interval. Therefore two data points are consumed (2 × 0.001 DDUs). From a consumption perspective, this is effectively two different metrics. A two-dimension tuple like this consumes 526 × 2 = 1,052 DDUs per year. 
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu1,cpu_type="INTEL" 55
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu2,cpu_type="INTEL" 75
  • Here, four distinct dimension pairs are reported within a 1-minute interval. Therefore, four data points are consumed (4 × 0.001 DDUs). From a consumption perspective, this is effectively four different metrics. A four-dimension tuple like this consumes 526 × 4 = 2,104 DDUs per year. 
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu1,cpu_type="INTEL" 55
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu2,cpu_type="INTEL" 75
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu3,cpu_type="INTEL" 55
    cpu.temp,cpu=cpu4,cpu_type="INTEL" 75

Each dimensional value (in this example, each network card) generates an individual time series within the chart. Therefore, for purposes of calculating custom-metric consumption, each dimensional value is counted as a separate custom metric.

Limits

The following limits apply to metric ingestion using a common ingestion channel. For API ingested metrics, if any limit is exceeded, the API call returns the 400 response code, with details in the response body.

Entity
Limit
Description
Metric key length, characters
250
The total length of the metric key, including the prefix.
Dimension key length, characters
100
The total length of the dimension key.
Dimension value length, characters
250
The total length of the dimension value.
Number of dimensions per line
50
The number of dimensions in a single line of the payload.
Total number of possible metric keys per environment
20,000
The maximum number of metric keys that can be registered in Dynatrace.
Number of tuples per month per metric
1,000,000
The maximum number of tuples (unique metric-dimension key-dimension value-payload type combinations) for each metric key for the last 30 days.
Number of tuples per month for all custom metrics
50,000,000
The maximum number of tuples (unique metric-dimension key-dimension value-payload type combinations) for all custom metrics for the last 30 days.
Length of line, characters
50,000
The maximum length of a single line of the payload.

There's also a limit to the number of metrics that Dynatrace can ingest.

Channel

Limit

Per minute per OneAgent instance:

OneAgent version 1.213 and earlier 1,000
OneAgent version 1.215+ 100,000

There's no limit to the metric number, but API throttling applies.